SMALL BIZ NEEDS BIG LIFT NOW

Holiday season ‘make or break’ for city stores after shutdowns amid pandemic

Brooklyn bookseller Kalima DeSuze wants to be clear – she’s not anti-Amazon as much as she’s pro-keeping independent retailers alive amid a nasty pandemic that’s shut down much of the world’s economy.

So this Small Businesss Saturday, the owwner of Cafe con LLibros in Crown HHeights is asking eeveryone “to be mmore intentional” wwith their discretioonary spending. “OOf course Amazon caan get you your book in the nextn eight hours, but books are not necessities like toilet paper or baby food. Do you really need it that fast?” she asked. “What do we want our communities to look and feel like at the end of this? Do we want to see our local bookstores boarded up?” DeSuze, like other local entrepreneurs, will be open this

Saturday at limited capacity, hoping holiday shoppers will either stop by in person or head to her website as they check names off their gift lists.

Her goal is to grow online sales 15% to 20% over last year to offset any lack of foot traffic.

“Our political climate has not supported small businesses over the long haul through this pandemic. Stimulus money is running out. It’s become a political act to spend money to keep local businesses vibrant and viable,” she told the Daily News.

DeSuze said her three-year-old business turned a profit for the first time over the summer, but she still relies heavily on her other fulltime job at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College to make ends meet.

“Book selling is so up and down. You can have a tidal wave one month and then a serious dry period,” she said. “We really don’t bring in enough for our family to live off the bookstore. You have to sell a tremendous amount of books to really see a profit.”

Small Business Saturday was invented by American Express a decade ago to help mom-and-poptype businesses recover from the 2008 recession.

The company gave incentives to cardholders to buy from participating small businesses, and the shopping holiday wedged between Black Friday and Cyber Monday grew in notoriety with the added support of elected officials, business groups and social media hashtags.

In Astoria, Queens, several retailers are joining forces to offer a new virtual version of the Small Business Saturday “retail crawl” they promoted in pre-pandemic years.

Customers who shop at five of the 10 participating stores on Saturday can send screenshots of their completed online orders to redeem a cute, vintage-style tote bag that reads, “Thank you for shopping Astoria!”

“The holidays can really make or break a small retailer like us,” Nicole Panettieri, owner of The Brass Owl boutique on Ditmars

Blvd., told The News.

Panettieri, 41, said her team “really hustled” to get 95% of her inventory on her website this holiday season, and she’s hoping her customized care packages and the online crawl, which she’s spearheading, drive traffic.

“Before the pandemic, we could have upward of 30 people in the store. Now we only allow six at a time,” she said. “It’s going to be difficult to make up that volume. It’s scary.”

Nearby business owner Vivian Dritsas added her Lavender Label store to the retail crawl and also organized a GoFundMe to help the Astoria Restoration Association pay for the traditional holiday lights along Ditmars Blvd., a display that was in jeopardy this year.

“Thanksgiving through December is the most important time for lots of small businesses in this area. If I don’t make a certain amount, I won’t make it through January and February,” Dritsas told The News.

“It’s been challenging. We just got out of the hole after we closed in March for three months. I’m trying to be optimistic, but I’m worried. With cases spiking again, if we shut down, I’m in trouble,” she said.

Dritsas said small businesses like hers are important to the fabric of a community. Lavender Label donates to local schools, offers teacher discounts, organizes an annual coat drive and has been offering inexpensive local delivery to customers in a 2-mile radius.

“In my old age I’ve become a delivery girl,” the 40-year-old business owner joked.

“We’re really doing everything we can to survive,” she said.

DeSuze said she hopes shoppers won’t view this year’s Small Business Saturday as a one-day push, but more an opportunity to start a “commitment to the longevity” of local retailers in their neighborhoods.

“We had a little bit of a sales bump this summer when we saw a lot of support around racial justice, but we still have to watch every penny and anticipate those days when we only get two book sales because it’s raining outside and a pandemic,” she said.

“The activism we saw this summer was great. Small Business Saturday is great. But we really need people to be concerned about our long-term sustainability,” she said.

Cafe con Libros, which specializes in feminist titles, was one of several local bookstores that took part in the recent “Boxed Out” campaign organized by the American Booksellers Association.

Participating stores hung signage with provocative slogans reading, “Books curated by real people, not a creepy algorithm,” and, “If you want Amazon to be the world’s only retailer, keep shopping there.”

DeSuze said she hopes Cafe con Libros, which also sells coffee, can continue as an in-person social hub for her community long into the future.

“There’s really something unicorn-ish about being a book seller in a small community and having meaning in that community,” she said. “We absolutely need folks’ support.”