Through these frightening and unforeseeable times, our world has changed as we know it, and so has the retail market. With the stay-at-home orders, firings and furloughs, and plunge in the stock market, the U.S. economy has taken a downfall and many Americans have lost much. Within the past few weeks, spending habits have dramatically changed, and toilet paper, groceries, a good pair of sweats, and of course our health are what we most need.
As buyers stop shopping businesses begin to fail, and small shops that don’t have enough money in the bank are forced to close. For a nation that was once defined by small businesses, this is a tragic reality that is drastically shifting the way our retail market works. With limited resources and business, each company faces its own battle in maintaining a source of profit and staying open. Located in East Hampton, New York, Gubbins the Perfect Fit (a sporting goods store) has been one of the many businesses forced to change their model in order to adapt to the pandemic and fight to stay open.
“Everything has changed,” says owner Geary Gubbins, who continued that “as a business that was reliant on people coming in the door and trying things on, we’ve had to completely shift what we focus on.”
A shift of this size isn’t easy, neither for the business nor the customer, especially due to the sudden change. To try to make this transition as seamless as possible, the Gubbins team took the store phones and forwarded them to their cellphones. Although it might seem like a small step, Gubbins thought of it as a necessity for this new business model.
Gubbins stated, “Having the store phones connected to our cell allowed us to remain in contact with our customers via text, almost as if we were a personal assistant so that if someone needed something, we were there for them remotely and could answer their questions.”
Besides communicating via text with potential customers, Gubbins has also pivoted and begun to switch their products to ones that are currently in demand in the community instead of many of their regular products.
Normally, as Gubbins stated, “we have a huge kids business ––apparel and footwear–– but unfortunately without the ability for kids to try things on, purchases just aren’t plausible. Where people have really needed our services includes weights and home exercise equipment, so that’s where we’ve really been focussing our attention.”
Simply put: “anything that people are calling for, that’s what we are focusing on.”
Gubbins, just like many other businesses, has been extremely flexible in these difficult times and although they’ve been able to adapt to the situation very well, business simply just isn’t the same.
Gubbins stated, “In terms of gross sales we’ve probably been doing 90% less than what we’ve done in years past.”
Additionally, since Gubbins is a largely seasonal business and earns most of their profit in July and August they’ve had to make some tough calls as they plan ahead for the future months.
“Since we’re doing much less, we’ve had to be smarter in terms of expenses. This, unfortunately, means we haven’t had any hiring for the summer where normally at this time we have triple the staff we currently have. We have also been focussing on being really conservative with our buying and trying not to get overextended with too much inventory”
With the decision to modestly spend capital comes the prediction that in these next few months business won’t be much better. Gubbins has stated that “even if we could open tomorrow, we wouldn’t necessarily buy the normal inventory and prepare for the normal July and August that we usually see.”
They have an approach to take things slow and just get through the pandemic alive. Gubbins said, “As a family business, we are really looking at the year 2020 as punting on the year. We are just going to try to survive this year.”
Although Gubbins, just like many other small businesses, has drastically slowed sales and been hit hard by the pandemic, they are optimistic that at some point, whether that be in September or in a year from now, business will resume.
After the pandemic, Gubbins predicted that the “demand for sporting equipment and clothing will be there more than ever before. I think that people will have a newfound appreciation for local businesses and I think they are going to want to support us.”
As Gubbins continues to support their local community during this time, they hope that the love will be reciprocated after we exit this crazed time and that they can “kick it right back to where [they] were before.”
Flexibility and resilience continue to be key in these difficult times while we, as well as our local businesses, do what’s necessary to survive, so that once life begins to resume, so can the commerce industry.
