What happens when your biggest customer is in the eye of a hurricane?
Our CEO and inventor Alison Grieve spoke to Insider about the Home Shopping Network (HSN) and its Florida headquarters, which were right in the path of Hurricane Irma.
"Last week we were glued to our tablet screens as the news reports of historically powerful Hurricane Irma came through thick and fast.
Used under a Creative Commons license. Image credit: Karl-Ludwig Poggemann
We have many personal friends on the East Coast, across Florida and over to Charleston.
I video called our friend Kelly, who had joined me just the other week at the ErgoExpo in Vegas.
Emergency alerts had pinged on our phones to warn us of flash flooding – an occurrence almost unheard of in Vegas but linked to the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey.
Now she was back in Charleston, huddled in the hallway with her dog, boyfriend, bedding and three suitcases filled with their most valuable possessions as a tornado ripped through a highway just two miles away from them.
The unpredictable Irma took a turn away from its forecast path shortly before the weekend. Instead of a sweep across the Eastern side of Florida and onto Georgia and the Carolinas, Irma swept slightly west, gaining in strength, and heading directly for St Pete, over the water from Tampa.
Why was this particularly concerning for G-Hold? Because our largest customer, HSN, is right bang in the middle of St Pete."
Read the full story here.
