Lightspeed (TSX: LSPD) (NYSE: LSPD), the one-stop commerce platform for merchants around the world to simplify, scale and create exceptional customer experiences, today announced the results of a study on the impacts of COVID-19 on the LGBTQ+ North American business community.
Lightspeed commissioned the exploratory study to Carleton University's Sprott School of Business along with the support from Canada's LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce (CGLCC).This study is part of Lightspeed's overarching Community through Commerce initiative, which serves as a tactical, data-driven approach to better understand the businesses Lightspeed powers with its one-stop commerce platform. As such, Lightspeed sought to gather actual data that would support some of the assumptions made about the true impacts of COVID-19 on this community. As a next step in this initiative, Lightspeed will engage with local North American LGBTQ+ Chambers of Commerce to identify ways of helping merchants continue to build thriving businesses.
Lightspeed's inaugural Global Diversity and Inclusion survey revealed that 16.81% of its global employees identify as LGBTQ+ and 9 out of 10 report that they feel comfortable talking about their culture and background with their colleagues. 83% of survey respondents feel they can be their authentic selves in the workplace.
"Lightspeed was founded in 2005, in Montreal's gay village and its original members were all part of the LGBTQ+ community. The ethos of our business has always been about diversity and inclusion from the very start, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that this research was particularly important to us," said Dax Dasilva, Founder and CEO of Lightspeed. "Both in the US and in Canada, majority-owned LGBTQ+ businesses generate trillions of dollars of contributions to the total GDP. Given their importance and influence on our economies, we wanted to understand exactly how the pandemic has affected this community and start a conversation with businesses and chambers of commerce, to help us build even better tools for resiliency."
Purpose of the study:
To assess whether there has been a disproportionately negative or positive impact from the pandemic on LGBTQ+ businesses and entrepreneurs.
To explore whether LGBTQ+ businesses, in responding to the COVID-19 crisis, have explicitly turned to or benefited from gay villages/neighbourhoods and/or similar community organizations.
To explore the options for investment and support that respondents perceive as necessary or helpful for post-pandemic recovery.
Key results:
According to qualitative data gathered from the study, gay villages saw a disproportionate amount of closures, boarded up storefronts and high rents compared to the rest of the LGBTQ+ led business community.
The types of businesses located in the villages are mostly retail, restaurants, bars and entertainment, which, according to Statistics Canada, were hardest hit during the pandemic.
Real gross domestic product (GDP) of food services and drinking places fell 39.5% in March 2020 and by another 40.8% in April 2020 as many of these businesses either closed completely or operated at a greatly reduced capacity, providing take-out or delivery services exclusively.
More than half (56%) of food service and drinking place operators reported being closed at some point last April, while 41% reported being closed for the entire month.
By the end of April 2020, sales in the food services and drinking places subsector fell 61.3% from pre-pandemic levels observed in February 2020.
Similarly in the United States, the National Restaurant Association reported that restaurant and food-service sales were $240 billion below their 2020 pre-pandemic foreca...
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