COVID 19 PANDEMIC: THE INSPIRATION TO START ONLINE BUSINESS

Abstract

This descriptive paper presents how one of English students of Faculty of Education, Muhammadiyah University of Jakarta, who joined entrepreneur class, being inspired by the situation of covid-19 to start online business. This is aimed to answer three focuses, how pandemic inspired the student to build online business, what are the preparations for the business and what have been gained while running that online business. In collecting the data, observation and unstructured interview were used as the instruments. The observation was focused on capturing how this online business managed by the owner through social media. After doing the observation, unstructured online interview was taken via Zoom in order to get in-depth information needed to support the research questions aforementioned above. The results of the study revealed that first, the student was inspired by the rapid spreading of online business and by most business owners who promoted various products online. Second, in the preparation, he determined a label as his virtual store name, designing logo, creating ‘thank you’ card and buying good quality materials with low prices for the packaging. Third, after the first three months becoming reseller of women’s stuffs such as body treatment, bags, shoes, cosmetics and various accessories, up to end of September, more than hundred goods had been sold and he could earn around one million of net-profit every month. Even more, currently, he has been saving money as the capital, stocking quite big number of stuffs and planning to have one physical store to run the business offline after the pandemic is over