May 22, 2020

A Sioux Falls couple with businesses in the medical and media industries has been forced to adapt both business models during the pandemic.

High Plains Medical Supply has been in business for a decade and typically sells operating room supplies and disposable supplies to hospitals and clinics. When the market for most surgeries came to a halt this spring, owner Garrett Gross used his connections in the medical sales industry to bring in new products.

That allowed him to start selling personal protective equipment and supplies such as hand sanitizer and face masks through his website.

He has been selling to banks, real estate agents, factories and other business customers in Sioux Falls.

At the same time, he and his wife, Mindy, who started AGE Media six years ago, adjusted that model. Their media services centered mostly on their monthly publication, The Farming Families.

“In disruptive times with events like COVID-19, you learn really quick what you have and what you don’t have,” Gross said. “Mindy and I evaluated the strengths of our businesses and quickly realized the relationships we had with our customers in both sectors could complement each other.”

The Grosses have put a two-month hold on The Farming Families but plan to relaunch it in June or July. Gross said they stopped the publication temporarily because of safety concerns of going into subjects’ homes to feature them.

The Grosses instead have used this period to focus on their AGE SMS service, which allows local businesses to send text messages to their customers.

“There’s no better way to immediately reach your customer than with a text message,” Gross said. “And our platform, there are little things that make it different than other ones that are on the market, whether it be secondary keywords or longer messages that we can send. It’s a very effective way to reach people’s customers that they are doing business with.”

They also have launched “Solve Your City,” an interactive game that uses SMS to send participants on a scavenger hunt around Sioux Falls. Upon completing the hunt, players receive special deals from participating businesses. The first challenge is geared toward 6- to 12-year-old kids and their parents, but Gross said they are working on future challenges that are more complicated and focused on an older audience.

Across both their businesses, the Grosses have had to be adaptable over the past few months, making rapid changes  during uncertain times.

“It’s like anything else; you can’t control the dynamics in the market that are always going to change,” he said. “All you can control is how you adapt to them and just stay positive and keep moving forward. Identify needs, and fill them for the customers that you have. That’s the whole process of getting through this.”