- I would have never seen this coming in a million years.

- It's like living in a dystopian science fiction novel that's now turned into reality.

A pandemic never crossed my mind.

- Yeah.

Not high on the list.

(soft music) My name is Jamie Stillman and I'm the President.

- And my name is Julie Robbins and I'm the CEO of EarthQuaker Devices and we're here in downtown Akron.

- EarhQuaker Devices designs and builds guitar effect peddles by hand.

- Since we last spoke, we were honored by the city of Akron.

We had a street designated EarthQuaker Drive which was a huge honor but essentially we remain the same business.

Since the outbreak started, Earthquaker is a non essential business, so we were ordered by the State to close down and stay at home and despite being really punk rock at heart, it turns out we're a bunch of rule followers.

So right now we have everyone building pedals at different stages in their bedrooms, basements... - Back to where it started.

- Yeah.

Our method of production, we're really fortunate that it's pretty low tech and hands on.

- There's no contact handoffs by building kits and they sit in the garage and people schedule times to come in and get them.

It's a very time consuming, non efficient process but we've been able to keep everybody employed from the whole thing without any real struggles.

- Well, I mean-- - I mean (laughing) - You know, considering.

- Yeah.

- It's not comfortable by any means.

- We just felt really responsible for our employees and to lay them off in one of the most devastating times in history we felt like was.. would be just like turning them out to the wolves and instead we've really tried to embrace them and bring them closer.

A lot of things that we do, we're gonna need to rethink it.

How do we launch a pedal?

How long do things take to go through production?

- I mean, our primary audience are musicians.

- Exactly.

- Musicians aren't really able to tour, play any shows, do anything like that for the foreseeable future.

There's really been no... - Yeah.

indication when that's going to go back to normal or when people are gonna feel comfortable doing it.

- I think it's pretty clear that small businesses are kind of the lifeline of our economy.

- You can't survive on Amazon and delivery alone - yeah.

like if that's the only way that people are gonna get out and talk to the people in their neighborhood and their friends and stuff.

It's a very important part of the culture.

- I'm hoping that some of these conversations that we're having about protecting vulnerable populations, that we really don't forget that when we start to see this virus diminish.

For me, it's like kind of waking up again and trying to navigate this new world (laughs) and I think that it's going to continue to evolve.