Here's how California’s stay-at-home order is forcing former Vogue editor Emily Holt to rethink the way she runs her San Francisco boutique Hero Shop.
Nearly 85% of Hero Shop’s revenue comes from in-store purchases . The idea of eliminating that stream for almost a month, while still having bills to pay, was crushing. All I could do was act. I had to tell my five part-time staffers to not come in and that essentially they were without a job for three weeks. They’d seen the news; they knew what was happening. Luckily they are mostly students working just a couple hours a week or have other sources of income.
Meanwhile, my only full-time employee, Haley, and I quickly consolidated inventory , packed up whatever paperwork we’d need to work from home, shipped out packages being sent to clients on approval, and repeated over and over to each other, “What the fuck.” I also reached out to other retailers. “What are you doing about deliveries?” I emailed Christina Bryant, who had closed her home store St. Frank in Pacific Heights. A friend who has a women’s store in the Mission wrote to me, “Are you asking for a rent abatement?” At least five fellow entrepreneurs forwarded the application from San Francisco’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development for a $10,000 grant as part of its COVID-19 Small Business Resiliency Fund.
I rerouted the shipments I could to my apartment, and our landlords and vendors have said they’re willing to work with us on payment terms. Fortunately, Hero Shop has a loyal Instagram following, and clients use our Stories and DMs as a way to shop. So I’ve prioritized posting and am trying to make our Stories more engaging now that I don’t have the advantage of meeting clients in person.
I have no idea if this will work. I have no idea what Hero Shop will look like in three weeks, let alone three months. Maybe the business will pivot and we’ll become online retail geniuses. More likely, it’ll be a haul. What buoys me are the online purchases already made by friends who know how much any sale counts right now, even if they don’t have anywhere to wear thatdress.
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