Pressing ahead
Some entrepreneurs open physical locations despite pandemic’s economic difficulties |
Atthestartof2020,itwas all lining up for Kim
Davis: She’d spent years growing her clothing boutique, Flower Wild, online; in Januar y, she signed a lease in a new retail development to open her first physical storefront. She was supposed to move in that March.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Supply chains ground to a halt. Construction on the retail space Davis leased was delayed through the summer. By the time the building was completed, it was three months past her original move-in date.
But rather than waiting for the crisis that has devastated many small businesses to pass, Davis persevered through the hardest months and seized the opportunity to open her shop anyway. Her Flower Wild storefront finally opened on Nov. 28 at 1125 Neon Forest Circle in Longmont and used a strong holiday season to build momentum into 2021.
“I can’t say that I didn’t look at the current state of the world and think, ‘What am I doing?’” Davis said. “But I have always been really confident in Flower Wild. I knew it was time to grow up. I wasn’t going to let lockdown crush my business.”
While opening a new retail shop or restaurant during a global pandemic that has decimated those industries may seem counterintuitive, Davis is one of many entrepreneurs in Boulder County who have used a combination of determination and opportunity to launch a new business in the era of COVID-19.
“What’s encouraging is that we’re not just seeing a couple businesses open up, we’re seeing a critical mass,” said Chip, the Downtown Boulder Partnership CEO whose legal name does not include a surname.
Indeed, a report released in February on fourth-quarter business and economic indicators from the Colorado Secretar y of State and the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder shows that new entity filings were up 22.1 percent year-overyear in the fourth quarter of 2020, continuing an upward trend that dates back to 2009. Dissolution filings were also up 8.1 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2020, but they remained far off the highs that occurred during the Great Recession and were still lower than fourth-quarter dissolutions in ever y year from 2014 through 2018.
Kasie Waxman, vice president of operations and managing partner for the Mexican restaurant My Neighbor Felix, was in a similar position to Davis when the pandemic hit: The restaurant’s first location, in Denver’s Lohi neighborhood, was under construction, and management was already looking at spaces in Boulder for a second location.
“We were starry-eyed and planning a grand opening ,” Waxman said.
COVID changed all of that. Like Flower Wild, the space that My Neighbor Felix had leased suffered from construction delays. The restaurant’s Lohi location didn’t open until September. But the pandemic also brought opportunity. Boulder-based Walnut Restaurant Group announced in June that it would close its three restaurants in downtown Boulder. That freed up the space at 901 Pearl St., formerly occupied by Italian restaurant Via Perla. My Neighbor Felix was able to get that location and plans to open its first Boulder eater y by the beginning of April.
For Landon Russell, owner of Atlas Escape Rooms, the pandemic also created an opening. At the beginning of the year, he managed multiple locations for a chain of escape rooms that closed when lockdowns began. When the owner decided not to reopen, Russell attempted to buy the company. They couldn’t agree on a price, so Russell started his own. He was able to get a good deal on his lease at 1113 Spruce St. and opened Atlas Escape Rooms at the beginning of February.
“I was a little hesitant,” Russell said. “I mean, obviously this is a ver y scar y time. I thought I should beat the cur ve and get some cheap property. I thought I had to gamble a little bit.”
Why gamble like that during times as crazy as these? Beyond the opportunities of good lease rates or unexpected vacancies in desirable locations, entrepreneurs who have opened new businesses during the pandemic saw that they could give som ple that COVID
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