Non-essential businesses can reopen for curbside pickup, offering potential lifeline for many small retailers,
As lockdown rules ease, businesses connect with customers in new ways
Victor Cappella looks at the two racks full of custom jackets, suits and dress shirts that clients have been waiting for eight weeks to get their hands on.
One more day, and they’ll be able to pick up their orders.
His store, Victory Menswear on Eglinton Avenue West, is one of many in Toronto that are preparing to reopen after Premier Doug Ford announced last week that retailers could start offering curbside pickup as the province slowly begins lifting lockdown measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Monday, Cappella will start going through his phone book and calling clients to tell them their orders — which they placed in the winter — can be picked up. He said he will also take the opportunity to email his clients pictures of products he has in store. If something catches their eye, they can pay up front and pick it up at the front door.
It’s an opportunity to let clients know the business is still alive, he said.
More than half of Cappella’s business comes from people who are looking for custom tailored clothing or alterations. With in-person shopping out of the question, Cappella closed down his 750-square-foot store entirely in mid-March.
“We went from having a really good year, actually, to the store being completely shut down,” he said.
Cappella, who has been in the industry for more than 20 years, said his business model was not the most suitable for e-commerce.
“Men’s clothing specifically, it’s about building relationships with your clients. People want to see what they’re buying, they want to try it on.”
Meanwhile, at Mount Pleasant Road and Hillsdale Avenue, Eleanor LeFave is tending to the thousands of books inside her two-floor shop, Mabel’s Fables Children’s Bookstore.
She began offering curbside pickup soon after most brickand-mortar retailers were forced to close their doors to customers.
“Small retailers are very good at turning on a dime,” said LeFave. “We’ve been open for curbside (pickup) all along. A lot of bookstores have been.”
When customers call in, LeFave does a bit of personal shopping — suggesting books depending on the child’s age and interests — and then she jots down the credit card information, processes the transaction, puts the books in a bag and waits for the customer to arrive at the store.
“They call us from the sidewalk, and they stay there,” she said. “We have a little red crate … I bring their bag out, I scoot back inside, and we wave at each other.”
Sales are down more than 50 per cent and LeFave has had to lay off all of her part-time employees, but curbside pickup has been enough to keep the business open — for now.
“Let’s just say we can pay some of the bills,” she said.
Other small-business owners had a strong social media presence long before the pandemic hit and were able to quickly direct their customers to an online shop.
Brooke Manning, owner of Likely General on Roncesvalles Avenue, had been driving around the GTA since midMarch, delivering local orders placed online. Her store sells in artisan home goods.
Last week, she started offering curbside pickup on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
It was a “pretty smooth transition,” she said.
Customers pay online and select a time slot — each is 15 minutes — to indicate when they will pick up their order on the stoop outside the store. This limits the likelihood that more than one customer will show up at the same time, Manning explained.
“To be honest, it’s just really, really nice to be in the shop seeing people again, even at a distance,” she said.
There was confusion among many business owners, when the lockdown rules were first imposed, about whether curbside service was still allowed. After several weeks of research, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business confirmed that only certain types of stores were allowed to offer curbside pickup. By that time, many others were already offering the service.
Former city councillor Mary Fragedakis, who now heads the GreekTown on the Danforth Business Improvement Association, said about a quarter to a third of the nearly 400 businesses in Greektown are still operational at some capacity.
Some of those businesses are essential services such as grocery stores or pharmacies, but others are independent retailers that have managed to carve out an existence online, she said.
“For a lot of the small businesses, they weren’t really present in the online sphere, so this has been an opportunity for them to reimagine their online businesses,” she said.