What motivated you to bring HiTT to Hoboken? My wife and I are former professional table tennis athletes. We both represented our respective countries’ national teams for many years (the USA for me, New Zealand for her). Through the sport, we met as kids and eventually got married and moved to Hoboken! We immediately fell in love with the city/community and the first thing we did when we moved here 3 years ago was looking for somewhere to play table tennis but unfortunately, there was no such facility. Nearly two years ago, an opportunity presented itself to start our own business and share our passion with the community that we loved so we jumped on the chance!
What is one thing you’re proud of HiTT for contributing to Hoboken? Since starting HiTT, we have fostered a growing table tennis community for players of all ages, experience, and skill levels, and many of our clients have become like family to us! We just hope to continue to share the sport we love and grow this community as much as possible!
How has your business adapted to COVID? We never could have predicted the destructive impact COVID was going to have on the people of our country and the economy, especially the toll on small businesses. We have become much more diligent with our sanitization processes and social distancing guidelines for the safety and comfort of our customers and staff. I believe it will be a slow and tough road regaining the momentum we had prior to the shutdown and many of our previous streams of income (parties, corporate events, etc.) will take a long time before demand is there again.
How can the Hoboken community help HiTT thrive? Financial aid would be a huge help, especially during the 4-month shutdown, we continued paying our rent diligently despite receiving no income and virtually no government help. We did not qualify for PPP as we were a very new business and did not turn a profit in 2019, which was our first year. We would also appreciate getting the word out that we’ve reopened and reassure the community that we’re adhering strictly to COVID guidelines.
