BUSINESS: READY, SET … RETAIL-TO-GO
Houston-area retailers get innovative for curbside pickup, shopping
After a month of staying at home, starting Friday Houstonians get to go shopping again — even if it is just for curbside pickup.
It’s a welcome change for retail stores shuttered since mid-March due to the coronavirus pandemic. For some, business has been brisk online, for others it’s been a trickle.
Shop owners have had to get creative. Fady Armanious, dressed to the nines, hosts a weekly cocktail party at Tootsies, the luxury retailer in Upper Kirby. Armanious sits in a director’s chair, surrounded by designer clothing and high-end accessories, and connects with his audience of ladies-who-lunch via Zoom.
Like many local retailers, Tootsies
couldn’t afford to wait for business to resume as usual. The online sip and shop is one way they have been luring shoppers away from the national chains’ extensive websites and sales.
When Gov. Greg Abbott last week announced plans to reopen the state for “retail-to-go,” that’s essentially what a lot of stores had been doing. Now they have the official green light.
Under Abbott’s order, employees are required to wear face coverings, work at least six feet apart and should be screened for symptoms
before entering the store. Customers are urged to pay for their items over the phone or online to limit person-to-person contact. Shop owners must have hand sanitizer and masks for staff, limit the number of people in the store and offer curbside pickup.
At MODChic Couture at Sugar Land’s Town Square, owner and designer Ebele Iloanya is hopeful that her customers will drive over to pick up spring and summer trends from her women’s wear and accessories store. Still, she’s cautious.
“Business was good before all of this,” said Iloanya, who relocated from Rice Village last summer to be closer to home. “There are a lot of restaurants in the area, so we had good walk-in traffic. It’s been a huge impact on my business to be closed for a month, but I’ve seen what COVID-19 is doing to the nation.”
Iloanya, who has three employees, plans to return to her regular business hours Tuesday through Sundays.
“I still believe in the American spirit, and we’ll come back stronger,” she said.
Easing back into business
Major retail stores have taken an apocalyptic hit with the pandemic. JCPenney teeters on the edge of bankruptcy; Neiman Marcus will reportedly seek bankruptcy protection this week; and Macy’s furloughed most of its employees in March. TJX Companies, the off-price retailer that owns TJ Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods, furloughed the majority of employees last week. And Sephora laid off more than 3,700 parttime and seasonal employees in the United States and Canada. Nordstrom and Kohl’s are already offering curbside pickup for online orders.
The governor’s new rules are allowing nonessential retail companies to ease back into business.
Although Austin-based jewelry company Kendra Scott furloughed its employees in March, now it is bringing employees back for curbside shopping/pickup at 21 Texas stores, including seven in Houston, said Colleen Wilson, vice president of retail. The stores will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.
“The key is being where the shopper wants to be,” Wilson said. “We plan to continue curbside service and continue every effort for our customers to be safe.”
Entering the digital arena
Kendra Scott, a Klein High School graduate who founded the company in 2002, serves on Abbott’s Strike Force to Open Texas team, along with Houston businessman Tilman Fertitta. She has 106 stores nationwide.
Launching retail-to-go before Mother’s Day is timely. “We know we have a product that brings mothers joy, and we want to be there for our shoppers,” Wilson said.
It took the coronavirus to push Scruples Boutique in the Champions Forest area to launch its first online shop. With eight employees, the store has a loyal customer base that relishes the in-store experience, said Linda Griffin Dietert, marketing director for Scruples, which her mother, Betty Griffin, opened in 1979.
“We’ve been doing curbside during this time, but we never had an online shop. We finally had the time to set it up while the store was closed,” Dietert said. “But this has been hard, knowing that our main business has suffered.”
In Uptown Park, Elizabeth Anthony’s senior buyer Nicole Dillon Blaylock said the luxury store has moved online, too.
“I was inspired by that quote, ‘In a crisis, you innovate.’ So that’s what we’re doing,” she says. “We’re selling on Instagram, and we’re working toward having a website with an e-commerce form. Every Thursday is a new Gems & Jewels episode for us,” Dillon Blaylock said. “Blake, our jewelry specialist, creates an educational video about jewelry. It’s been really helpful for new clients.”
Strategizing for sales
In the Heights, Manready Mercantile’s owner Travis Weaver will be able to fulfill orders he’s had to decline when he reopens Friday.
“Everybody wants feel-good items right now,” he said. “Candles, cooking supplies, comfortable shirts for lounging and hanging out on the couch. And, there’s been an uptick in ‘made in the USA’ items, too.”
His menswear and apothecary shop wasn’t set up for curbside service. To make the adjustments, he and his 15-person staff met on Monday to discuss the new system.
“We’re setting up a pop-up station in front of the flag where everyone used to take photos,” he said. “Now there are plastic tables from Wal-Mart.” That’s where customers who place online orders can collect their wares.
Weaver is also setting up a system for BYOB hand sanitizer. “We can get the sanitizer, but there’s a shortage of bottles right now,” he said. “Customers can put theirs under a spout, like soda under a fountain, and then we’ll weigh the bottle on a scale.”
It’s a big shift for a store whose former calling card was a complimentary Old Fashioned cocktail while customers shopped.
Getting customers back
Though furniture stores were deemed “essential” businesses and could have remained open during the stay-home order, most did not. Gallery Furniture stayed open, though Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale said he had better traffic online than in person. He kept workers busy delivering food to senior citizens.
Suzanne Coppola, owner of Laurier Blanc, which sells home furnishings and antiques, was already grappling with the economic effects of the canceled Round Top antiques shows. She will reopen Friday with a sophisticated website offering a 360-degree virtual gallery tour and extensive photography of the European antiques she would have sold in Round Top.
At BeDESIGN, a niche furniture store on West Alabama, co-owners Adrian Duenas and Marcelo Saenz will reopen, relying on inventory they already have. Most of their product is from Italy, where factories are closed.
Their priority has been to keep paying staff while waiting out the worst of the pandemic. They’ve been planning their strategy: there’s a disinfecting floor mat at the front door, masks and hand sanitizer on entry, and they will only allow only one customer group in the store at a time.
“You can tour alone, and the showroom will be closed (to anyone else). You’ll feel like a celebrity,” Duenas said.
Sharon Stetzel-Thompson kept her Stetzel and Associates furniture showroom open for about a week after the county stay-home order, but she had so little business she closed. She reopened this week with a going-out-of-business sale; she had already planned to retire, she said.
At Scruples, Dietert said they tried to apply for a small-business loan to help with the revenue lost during the shutdown, but found the multi-application process frustrating.
“Our business is based on relationships, so we have to rely on that,” Dietert said. “Mom called about 50 customers to see how they were doing during this time. She has been through the oil bust of the ’80s, and she’s concerned now, but we’ll weather this. We still have customers saying they want pretty things that make them happy. So we’re looking on the bright side because no one is alone in this. Everyone is feeling it.”