Pirate Business During the Plague

9 months ago I be planning on building a mini pirate theme center that included a pirate restaurant, bar, hotel, game center, n' store. I hired a feasibility consultant n' be ready to put a bid on some land next to the water.  

Niche pirate business' be based on folks buying quality pirate clothing.  People only buy pirate clothing if they have an event to wear it to, so what happens to a business when there are no longer any events to go to?  Pirate clothing be not an essential business, but we survived April by making plague mask, though it only took two months before that market was saturated by China n' every other business on the entire 7 seas.  

I promised my staff that I would not make any of them walk the plank, which was easy to do when we thought the plague would be over by summer.  Now that we're beyond twice that in time n' it be looking like this plague may not end until next fall, it be a lot harder to keep that promise! 

I started building an 8 foot pirate ship as hobby project during the slow plague season n' I found I like building boats, as any old sea dog would.  Making commercial boats be much more difficult than making pirate clothing, n' so I found a partner with experience in making boats.  I have since spent the entire summer building out arrrr space so we can make boats.  We also just spend 4 days learning to build production boats from a master boat builder.  There be tons of problems that must be solved in order for us to get this product to market.  

In the meantime, I continued to watch arrr business get smaller and smaller, n' I had to do something that didn't cost a lot of money. On Talk Like a Pirate Day, I started a live shopping program called the Pirate Plunder Show, which be a 45-60 minute live show on Facebook every Sunday at 5 pm EST. I was a professional photographer who be much more comfortable behind the camera, instead of in front of it, but a captain must do what he can to keep his ship afloat. 

I am continuing to create new designs, as a fashion business must alway have new products. 3 months ago I placed orders with arrrr factories in India for products we will need 3 months from now, but I remain unsure if the largest pirate event of the year, Gasparilla, will occur next year.  If it doesn't, we may be sunk. If it does happen, will it be 25%, 50%, or 75% of normal?  If I guess wrong we may also be sunk. A pirate's lifebe an adventure, which be rarely predictable.