CLEVELAND — BoxCast, a Cleveland-based streaming company, has seen orders increase 10-fold in the last few days while events and gatherings are canceled around the world to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus or COVID-19.
"We saw it start to come into effect two or three weeks ago," said CEO and Co-Founder Gordon Daily.
BoxCast sells much of the technology needed for organizations like churches, businesses, and sports teams to live stream their events or games.
The process normally requires a tech-savvy employee to hook up all the components to get a live stream on the web or social media. Boxcast has condensed that technology into simple boxes that those organizations can quickly set up and, with the help of BoxCast, share their live stream on the internet.
"BoxCast is a live video streaming company that helps organizations stream events when people can't be there," said Daily.
And right now, there aren't many events around the world many people are allowed to attend, increasing orders 10-fold and viewership through the website by roughly the same amount.
"It's churches, it's schools, and municipalities," said Daily. "It's video production houses, it's comedy shows in Austrailia."
While BoxCast is handling the sharp increase in business with a mostly empty office since nearly everyone in the roughly 30-person company is working remotely.
And yet, Daily says that change definitely won't be for good.
Daily says doing business will always require an in-person touch, when possible, and there's a camaraderie workers can't feel over even the best video conference.
"We love working together," said Daily. "We love seeing each other face-to-face and celebrating together."
But that might not be the reality for many other businesses and employees who have been forced to make remote working succeed.
Empty downtown Cleveland streets hide the fact that plenty of employees are still getting work done in Cleveland, they're just mostly working from home.
"This is kind of a tester for working from home a little more than we have in the past," said Cavaliers Director of Partnership Marketing Wincy Wong. "I think they'll find we are just as effective if not more so."
She usually works at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, where she'll return once the Coronavirus is contained. Until then, Wong has been working from her downtown apartment and real estate experts tell News 5 it's possible large companies could re-evaluate their office space if their workers have been able to work successfully from home.
"Since people have been so effective working from home it may be something they're more open to in the future," said Wong.
