North Bay small businesses fight for survival as holiday season, pandemic converge

Justine Malone likened being a small business owner navigating those early days of the coronavirus pandemic to the days and weeks after having a baby. Early on, friends and family come bearing gifts and casseroles, and extend offers to watch the infant while weary parents rest — anything to help.

And then, after some time, people move on. They wish mom and dad well and move back to their routines. But the young parents, or in this case, the small business owner, still need help getting their feet under them.

“After a couple of weeks nobody is there, and that is when you need it,” she said.

Malone, who with her daughter, Cleo, owns Cast Away Yarn Shop in Santa Rosa, said the funds from her federal Paycheck Protection Program loan are gone and she knows the deal her landlord cut her on the rent for her Railroad Square shop can’t last forever. The help that she and many other small business owners in Sonoma County need now is for people to shop locally.

“Right now it feels like if people don’t shop local, that is potentially the difference between local shops surviving or not,” Malone said.

Consumer choices this week and throughout the holiday season are pivotal, business owners said.

The day after Thanksgiving — Black Friday — is notorious not only for its deep price cuts but for the viral-worthy mayhem it inspires among deal-seeking shoppers. With the coronavirus raging on locally, those mad rushes are not likely to occur, but area business owners insist there are better reasons to forgo the big box madness this year.

"It’s really crucial, not just for Christmas, just shop local all the time,“ said Jenny DeYoung, owners of Disguise the Limit in Santa Rosa. ”This is the time to support your community. We might be gone. We might have to close our doors.“

And if the pandemic keeps shoppers away from the big box maelstrom Friday but the draw of large savings online is still a lure, local shopkeepers are asking people to press pause before they hit “Add to cart.”

“If you want local businesses to be here when you need them, now is the time to support them,” said Steve Good, co-owner of Hardisty’s Homewares in Santa Rosa.

Years of wildfires and now a global pandemic have made surviving as a small retailer even tougher, Good said.

“It’s make it or break it. It’s not easy, it’s not easy at all,” he said.

It’s been a decade since Small Business Saturday was coined by a not-so-small outfit: American Express. The idea was to highlight local businesses hurt by the 2008 recession and encourage people to spend their dollars close to home. Last year, nearly $20 billion was spent nationwide at independent retailers and restaurants on Small Business Saturday, according to an American Express Consumer Insights Survey with the National Federation of Independent Business.

This Saturday, the focus on going local goes beyond a kitschy phrase or sweet sentiment, retailers said. It’s about remaining open at all, and sustaining customer traffic for more than one day.

In years past, Malone has hosted a big Black Friday event at her shop. There were drawings for various levels of discounts and scores of people showed up. This Friday, Cast Away will be closed. Malone didn’t feel right staging a big event even though it’s a day she has pulled in 10 times her typical sales revenue.

Instead, she is closed Thursday and Friday and extending the sale over multiple days. They will be open for Small Business Saturday.

“We didn’t want to encourage any kind of crowd,” she said, even though knitting is an intrinsically tactile activity. It invites a human connection — with the yarn one buys or the knot an employee can literally help a customer untangle, she said.

“We offer a lot of support to people who are stuck on a knitting problem,“ she said. ”If they continue to buy online they won’t have that support available because you can’t get knitting help online as easy as you can buy yarn.“

The balance of adhering to health and safety codes, all while trying to survive in a brick and mortar format, is another challenge for smaller retailers who were already battling the big behemoths that regularly offer cheaper prices and frequent sales.

For Good, whose store is approaching its 100th year of business, the doors largely remained open through the spring, but business was painfully slow.

“We qualified as an essential business but nonetheless we went to maybe a tenth of what would be a normal day and that went on for like 12 weeks or so,” he said. “It was looking like we would have to start asking the hard questions, ’Are we going to stick this out?’ ”

But things started to come around. Locals, hunkered down for extended periods, started turning to new — or old — hobbies. People were cooking and baking more. Some were learning to can foods, Good said. Customers unearthed long dormant kitchen appliances that needed repair.

“It just goes to show you that people are staying home and doing things the way we used to do them, which is kind of cool,“ he said.

A similar thing unfolded this spring at King’s Nursery in Santa Rosa. Now in its sixth generation as a locally owned business, King’s saw a steady stream of customers through the early weeks and months of the shutdown. They were stocking up on gardening supplies and vegetable starts, said owner Fred King.

King said the nursery is somewhat insulated from big retail competition on the plant front. Ubiquitous items — tools, gloves and gear — can be a harder sell. But what people may not see is the benefit that a local transaction can have, he said.

“Almost all of our plants that we sell are local so the plant you buy supports the 18 employees that we have and it also supports the people who grew it in Glen Ellen or Olivet Road or Petaluma,” he said.

And the upgrade he’s undertaking at the nursery? The lumber is from Mead Clark Lumber Co. and Friedman’s Home Improvement, both locally owned.

“There is a huge trickle-down effect that you don’t see,“ he said.

But shopkeepers sympathized with locals who may be concerned about resuming their regular retail habits, perhaps shopping online, as well as those who, with the economy faltering, might not have the same kind of spending power they once did.

DeYoung understands shoppers have safety concerns. She has taken pains to keep people spaced apart, to keep her merchandise and elaborate costumes clean. Her caution this season even led her to cancel an annual visit from Santa Claus.

She’s counting on her loyal customers returning the thought.

“I hear it all the time that this is their favorite store in Santa Rosa and people just like to come here. That’s awesome. We hope that people want to keep us around,” she said. “These mom and pop stores are unique and kind of dying. It will be missed. You don’t get that kind of experience online.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.