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Downtown Kalamazoo stores using their creativity to stay open during the COVID-19 pandemic Writing and photos by Sophie grover

Between the empty shelves of toilet paper and not being able to see friends, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought on many hardships. Everything is changing, from in-person classes to figuring out how to work a Zoom call. Small business, a majorly in-person affair, is changing quite a bit.

Jeff Neal, proprietor of Terrapin World Imports located on the Kalamazoo Mall, a unique somewhat spiritual store that provides handcrafted jewelry and clothes, said they shut down on March 16th, a few days before Gretchen Whitmer announced the stay at home order.

“It [COVID-19] came on pretty hard and fast,” said Neal.

Around spring time, before COVID hit head on, Neal said things were slower, which is usual in the spring. Neal buys the goods in his stores from artists, and he had just finished shopping at a show in Tucson before things started closing up.

Neal said, “I feel very lucky that a lot of my stuff shipped before things slowed down.”

Another small business, Bee Joyful, a zero-waste market offering everything from kitchen to bath to kombucha, didn’t even get the chance to open before the shutdown hit. They were supposed to open April 3rd, about two weeks before the shutdown happened.

“I had ordered food,” Jessica Thompson, owner and creator of Bee Joyful, said when talking about her opening party. They couldn’t open until June 3rd.

An effective method both Terrapin and Bee Joyful found to keep getting out their goods while in-person shopping was limited was to start online stores.

“We never had a [online] commerce store,” said Neal.

Neal said the website is quite hard to manage because there's not a lot of duplicate items in the store. Most jewelry and clothing pieces are one of a kind, so Neal decided to put different “packages” together. He calls them relax packs and shirt packs. They have different tiers and provide things like jewelry, incense and little notebooks depending on what tier you pay for. If you want to check things out, click the button below.

Thompson, however, says her website is what has kept her business above water.

“During the first couple weeks when we all thought it’d be a nice little vacation, [I decided] I’m going to take this time to switch website providers,” Thompson said.

Thompson totally revamped their website and switched to basically all online sales. Check out the Bee Joyful Shop by clicking the button below.

Social media is even playing a part in business this year. Bee Joyful has been using TikTok to gain new customers.

“TikTok saved our business,” Thompson said aftereciding to advertise on TikTok and Instagram in hopes of keeping her business running. Thompson said it helped tremendously. They get orders from all over the country.

“Enough sales so we could pay for rent and utilities,” Thompson said.

Bee Joyful is also a very new concept and one of a kind. They’re one of the only zero-waste stores in the midwest. Thompson said she definitely thinks the novelty of her store has helped. She says she even has had people drive from the other end of the country, one family in particular traveled all the way from Washington state.

COVID-19 also restricts how actual in-person shopping happens. Inside Terrapin, things are definitely different than they were in April. Masks are required, hand sanitizer is stationed on tables, the door is propped open, and a steamer is used to clean clothes that have been tried on, and they use an antifungal cleaner to wipe down the hard surfaces.

According to

“It may be possible that a person can get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object with the virus on it and then touching their mouth nose or possibly their eyes.”

COVID-19 has made life a lot more complicated for small businesses. Between having to regulate the store to keep things safe to figuring out having an online presence. Local businesses are what make our community unique, so go give them some love and help them fight the fight we're all fighting. Remember to wear a mask!

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