Retailers re-open with hope, worry

LAKES REGION — It’s been nearly two months since the governor’s “Stay Home” order went into effect, and Monday was the first day since then that non-essential retailers were permitted to open their doors to the public. That hardly means business as usual, though.

State guidelines require various concessions to the coronavirus pandemic, including the use of facemasks, availability of hand sanitizer and observance of social distancing.

Selling comfort, virtually

Luke Dupuis, owner of Home Comfort, a furniture and interior design retailer in Center Harbor, said the sudden closure of his showroom was “a bit of a shock” in the middle of March, but that his business was able to continue operating thanks to a social media presence that his employees had already established by the time the pandemic arrived.

He said their customer base pivoted readily to online sales, and it became normal to see designers giving FaceTime tours of the showroom to clients staying at home. Sales during the shutdown fell overall, but Dupuis was pleased to be able to keep his business operating at 70% of normal thanks to online business.

“The community as a whole wants to do what they can to support us. And we feel that, now moreso than ever,” Dupuis said. “With my staff helping me, we’ve figured out ways to navigate and to do business a little bit differently with our customer base.”

Now that he is able to open his doors again to welcome customers into his showroom, he expects to greet more of a new normal than a return to a prior reality.

“As retailers, we’re going to learn how to operate our businesses so that they’re appropriate for the times,” Dupuis said. New practices will be adopted to make customers feel comfortable in the store, he said, yet he also wants to extend a virtual welcome to those who prefer to stay home.

“We also realize that, during the pandemic, people have honed their skills in working online, and we’re going to adapt to work the way our customers want us to. A lot of it is over the phone, emailing,” he said. As for going back to a prepandemic sales models, he said, “I think we all know that’s not going to happen.”

Puzzles, pickles and cheese

The Old Country Store, a fixture in Moultonborough, offered curbside pick-up during the shutdown, but didn’t fare nearly as well as Home Comfort. Owner Jo Hayden said overall sales were down about 90%, though a few items sold like hotcakes: whole pickles they keep in wooden barrels, aged cheddar cheese they sell by the pound, and jigsaw puzzles.

“I would do a curbside pick-up order for just two pickles,” Hayden mused.

This time of year would normally be slow for the Old Country Store, Hayden said. The pickle she’s in is trying to puzzle out what the next six months will be like.

“We don’t know what to do. We normally order hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise to come in for the summer, and we don’t know if we should do that,” she said. “We have no idea. It all is unknown, you can’t predict it.”

The biggest weekend of sales for Hayden is always Columbus Day Weekend. But that’s due to crowds coming to the Sandwich Fair, which won’t be held this year. The busy summer season usually starts with Memorial Day, then ramps up with the Fourth of July, and sales usually stay strong through foliage season. Will this year bear any resemblance to past sales trends?

“It’s kind of a wait and see, the next four weeks or six weeks will show us if people are coming in,” Hayden said.

On Monday, at least one person came in to try and find something at the Old Country Store. Colleen Daley, who splits her time between New York and Moultonborough, stopped in on her way home from the town transfer station.

“They have fantastic kitchen gadgets – I need a strainer for my sink,” Daley said through a face mask. She said she was glad to see the store open back up to the public, but added that the public should take proper precautions. “I hope they make it, I hope people use common sense so retailers stay open and don’t get shut back down.”

Anxiety and hope

Michelle Taft, owner of Bayswater Books in Center Harbor, said she was waiting a week to open because she didn’t yet have enough personal protective equipment to offer shoppers.

“For now, I will require it. I will help you be safe, you help keep me safe as well,” she said.

“I’m anxious to be open again, but I think that my customers will be a little bit anxious, too.” Taft said she’s planning to exercise every safety measure she can, including limiting the number of patrons at any time to 10.

Being closed for so long “was tough,” Taft said, so tough that she didn’t have the revenue she depends upon to stock her shelves in time for the return of seasonal residents. She started a crowdfunding campaign, which quickly raised more than $7,000.

“The Go Fund Me was my only option to prepare me to buy merchandise, pay the utilities, pay the lease, pay the overhead. It just wasn’t there for us,” Taft said.

She reached out for help, and help reached back.

“People have been so kind, so generous,” she said. “I’m optimistic, I think we’ll weather this.”

That addresses a short-term problem. Taft has taken a page from her largest competitor to bolster her long-term health. She now has a redesigned website that allows customers to shop for any book, and have it shipped to their home.

“It’s really designed to rival Amazon’s book business,” Taft said, expressing hope for the months and years to come.

“I’m very confident that we’ll be here for a good while yet. This will not be the end of us.”

Wait and see

One retailer that isn’t yet replacing the welcome mat is the League of NH Craftsmen Gallery in Meredith. Nancy Rowley, manager, said the gallery is open only by appointment and for curbside sales.

She said that Mother’s Day is usually a bright spot on her sales sheet, and having missed that this year, there’s not much hurry to re-open for a month that’s usually slow.

“We’re also tentative about a second wave,” of infection, Rowley said. “We want to see how it goes with other businesses that are about to open, once we see people accepting the fact that they can go out and move around again.”

Since the shutdown order was issued in March, Rowley said that sales have been “relatively non-existent,” despite the fact that the gallery has an online store. “People are used to coming in and having a tactile experience,” she said, though she added that sales through their website have been about double what they usually are when the gallery is open.

Rowley’s shop isn’t just about her and her employees, she added. The gallery displays the products of between 200 and 350 New Hampshire craftspeople at any given time. The full value of each product is often only evident when seeing it in person, she said.

“We hope that people will continue to support brick and mortar stores. Not everything can be put online. We hope that once things settle down, people will want to support local stores, buy products made and sold by local people, support that creative economy that makes New Hampshire so great… It’s really a necessity to keep businesses like this one alive.”