Lockdown small business still rolling on

FOR some people, lockdown restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic were an opportunity to get small businesses up and running.

While it might have been a while since people hunkered down and worked from home on mass, that hasn’t stopped Vasilios Hatzigiannis from growing his passion projects started during that time.

Based in Golden Square, Mr Hatzigiannis is selling metal art.

Working as a solar panel installer and with a background as a welder, he knows his way around workshop tools and has skills that inevitably helped in his side hustle.

Moving around his shed, he enthusiastically shows off several pieces he’s working on or has finished, including cars, cartoonish figurines, and his take on the snail Turbo from the kids’ film of the same name.

“It’s actually a turbo off a car, and the rest is just recycled,” he said. “This is actually properly powder-coated.”

Mr Hatzigiannis gets his wide variety of materials from both local and online shops.

“Chains, whatever I can get, nuts and bolts, bearings,” he said. “Whereas all the cars are all brand-new steel.”

Under the Facebook page Steel Edge Constructions, people send Mr Hatzigiannis photos of what they want him to make, and he goes from there.

“COVID set everyone onto social media and it was ticking along,” he said. “I make them, shape them, clean them up. I do a lot of exotic cars.”

While business was booming a few years ago, Mr Hatzigiannis said he believes people might not be as willing to invest as much in personal art pieces with the rising cost of living.

“I’ve been six months booked out. That was during COVID, I couldn’t keep up,” he said. “Now, I’ve got six weeks.

“Depending on the car, I can make anywhere from between $500 to, I think the dearest one I’ve done is $1000. It was a truck, a trailer, and a house to go on the trailer.

“But as soon as the war started overseas and inflation went up, people don’t quite have the money to spend $600 on a model.”

Mr Hatzigiannis said his creations usually take between 12 to 20 hours from start to finish, and while he works at his main job during the week, he tinkers away on them at the weekends.

“I would love for it to take over so I can do it full time, but I’ve been told that when you die is when your art’s actually valuable,” he said.

“A lot of my work actually goes to NSW and Queensland.

“Don’t get me wrong, a few locals have bought stuff off me, but not many people in Bendigo know that I even exist.

“I would just like to be discovered. Not many people know that I do it.”