In Decatur, Ga., Brave + Kind Bookshop has been closed to browsing for nearly a year, store owner Bunnie Hilliard reported. While she has had the option of reopening for quite a while now, per state and city regulations, she's chosen to operate as a "neighborhood web shop," with customers buying online and picking up their parcels on the bookstore's porch.
Hilliard noted that several times over the course of the pandemic she's seriously considered reopening for limited browsing or shopping by appointment. Each time, however, she's realized that this was essentially due to "peer pressure," as she felt that she should be doing what her colleagues were doing. She added that she hates to turn people away, and people are "ready to come inside," but there is still a significant chance that her staff and her customers could catch the virus in her store, and that is "too much of a burden for me to bear."
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| Bunnie Hilliard | |
Asked how her store fared in 2020 compared to a normal year, Hilliard explained that Brave + Kind first opened in September 2018, and was still relatively new when the pandemic hit and she chose to close down. That said, the store performed better last year than it did in 2019 despite the pandemic and being open only online. It seems like people in her community are making a serious effort to support her store and have a greater awareness in general of the need to support small businesses.
Going into 2020, one of Hiliard's goals was to expand the store's website functionality to allow for more than registering for events, signing up for the store's monthly book subscription service and buying a limited selection of pre-made book bundles. When the pandemic hit, Hilliard had to address the online shop immediately, which was "somewhat of a silver lining." Online sales have been strong enough, she continued, that she's been "okay with not opening the store." Another bright spot has been the shift to virtual events, which has allowed Hilliard and her team to reach a much wider audience than ever.
Looking ahead, Hilliard said that when the weather warms up a bit, she would like to start hosting sidewalk sales a few times per week. The shop has a fair amount of surrounding green space, so it feels that it would be safe to have customers browsing outside. Opening any further than that would probably not happen until at least the summer.
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Pia Ledina, owner of Turning the Page in Monroe, Conn., reported that her store is open for browsing and adults are bringing their children to the bookshop, and in that very general sense, things are "normal." Otherwise, it's hard to describe anything about the reality of the pandemic as normal.
Turning the Page was less than a year old when the pandemic began, so Ledina has little to which she can compare 2020. She and her team have taken things "month to month" and have made "change after change" to keep going. The store's customer base has grown significantly, and the 2020 holiday season was stronger than 2019's.
The bookstore's community has been "incredibly supportive," and Ledina noted that the store and community members have found ways to help each other that have gone beyond "typical small business interactions." Her background as an educator and school librarian, for example, was helpful after schools went virtual and parents needed more support. There was a very real sense, she added, of everybody being in it together.
So far in 2021, January and February were both much slower than the frantic end to 2020, but the outlook for the rest of the year is still good and "better than 2020." She and her team have felt a bit of "survivor's guilt" knowing that some of their bookstore and small business colleagues have either not made it or are still seriously struggling, but they are hopeful that as vaccinations continue and the weather improves, things return to normal sooner rather than later. --Alex Mutter