Small retailers find ways to adapt amid pandemic and online shopping convenience

Judy Woodruff:

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the face of retail in cities across the country, with small and independent businesses bearing the brunt of closures. And, this winter, many have seen a drop in demand from last year.

But as Paul Solman reports, owners and even a city are doing what they can to buck the trend this holiday season.

Daphne Olive, Co-Owner, Tabletop:

This is my first store.

Paul Solman:

Daphne Olive's first trip back to Tabletop, her defunct gift shop in downtown D.C.

So what happened here? I mean, you started this in, what, 2003?

Daphne Olive:

2003, yes. And we just needed to not get to a place where we're really losing money.

Paul Solman:

The store folded back in January.

Daphne Olive:

It's sad. I loved my store. I really loved my store.

Paul Solman:

But, six miles away, at the store's second location in residential Takoma Park:

Daphne Olive:

We have actually so far had a really — a great December, like a really festive and busy December.

Paul Solman:

Both stores had been bustling until COVID.

Then, in downtown D.C.:

Daphne Olive:

The hotels and the business district both became shadows of their former selves. It was not great, because most of the people who work in D.C. commute to D.C. from somewhere else.

Paul Solman:

In some sense, your business shifts from Dupont Circle, where people are coming into work…

Daphne Olive:

Yes.

Paul Solman:

… to Takoma Park…

Daphne Olive:

Right.

Paul Solman:

… where people are staying from work.

Daphne Olive:

Right.

C. Ebere Anokute, Research Manager, JLL:

It is a little bit of a tale of two corridors if you will.

Paul Solman:

C. Ebere Anokute, who tracks national retail trends, says Olive's experience is echoed in cities across the country, retail rents up in residential areas.

C. Ebere Anokute:

As opposed to the parts of the city that are dependent on tourism and office workers, where they have had a little bit of a more difficult recovery story.

Paul Solman:

While domestic travel has returned, international tourism is still 30 percent below pre-pandemic levels. And research says more than 50 percent of offices in 10 major U.S. cities languish unoccupied.

Among the hardest hit, downtown Chicago, where the city is trying desperately to fill empty storefronts. At once prime State Street, just off Chicago's Magnificent Mile of retail, the city has morphed a shuttered chain store into a pop-up holiday market.

Microbusinesses hawk their wares rent-free.

Andre Wilson, Owner, The Stylish Bundt:

As a native Chicagoan, I have traveled downtown State Street all my life and never thought for a moment that I would be on State Street, like, selling a product.

Paul Solman:

A human resources manager for about 20 years, Andre Wilson turned his pandemic hobby, baking, into a bundt business.

Andre Wilson:

So, I do some really fun things with bundt cake. For instance, I have a lemon and thyme, lemon and basil, apples and olive oil.

Paul Solman:

So it's good for you too.

Andre Wilson:

It's really good for you, yes. Don't worry about the sugar. I mean…

(LAUGHTER)

Paul Solman:

Wilson rents space in a commercial kitchen and sells online. But thanks to Chicago's Small Business Storefront Activation Program…

Andre Wilson:

OK, I will be here.

Paul Solman:

… he's been coaxed into turning on the charm.

Andre Wilson:

I'm naturally an introvert.

Paul Solman:

Really?

Andre Wilson:

I had to really change that and become more extroverted. I have learned things about myself that I never would have learned behind a spreadsheet, behind a laptop, working in corporate.

Paul Solman:

So, the personal touch behind an artisanal bundt, or, for marijuana aficionados, blunt.

Plus, in this era of thinking globally, customers like Lauren Roush get to shop locally.

Lauren Roush, Chicago Resident:

I would much rather spend my money here and support people from the community, people from the Chicago area, than going to a big department store, where the money is not necessarily going to come back to the community.

Paul Solman:

The city program has even turned vacant storefronts into art.

Nez Garza, Artist:

The city of Chicago had a grant for artists in Lakeview and Roscoe. So, that's where the money came from for this project.

Paul Solman:

So you're a government employee here?

Nez Garza:

For this one, yes.

Paul Solman:

Back in D.C., in-person can mean unearthing buried treasures at Capitol Hill Books.

Kyle Burk, Co-Owner, Capitol Hill Books:

We just got this Really great set of Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs.

Paul Solman:

And that's the one that Mark Twain got him to write.

Kyle Burk:

That's exactly right.

Paul Solman:

But when COVID closed Kyle Burk's doors, how to personalize? With grab bags.

Kyle Burk:

We kind of converted to an online business, and these grab bags were the main way that we were able to stay afloat.

Paul Solman:

Customers submit favorite authors or genres and a budget.

Kyle Burk:

When you go on Amazon, you're just going to get recommended the newest, latest thing.

The algorithm that we have, which is our actual human employees, is just better.

Paul Solman:

Human employees who read the way most of us eat. So I plunged online for a $50 bag, mentioning Samuel R. Delany, who writes speculative fiction, and then, offline, none 9of these are in any way obvious.

Kyle Burk:

Same with this one. This is "The Intuitionist" by Colson Whitehead. It's about rival elevator inspector factions.

(LAUGHTER)

Kyle Burk:

I guarantee you, a better novel about elevator factions, you will not read than this one.

(LAUGHTER)

Paul Solman:

Today, Burk survives because he's in the right corridor, residential Capitol Hill, which benefits from work from home.

But wait a minute, I ask our retail expert, isn't physical bricks-and-mortar retail a bad bet, given the growth of online shopping?

C. Ebere Anokute:

No, Paul, I would not say that.

Paul Solman:

Online shopping spiked to historic highs when COVID hit, Anokute says, but has leveled off at about 15 percent of all U.S. retail.

C. Ebere Anokute:

What that tells me, Paul, is that we are actually approaching hopefully some sort of equilibrium in the online vs. brick-and-mortar equation.

All of the most successful retailers have figured out a way to combine both into some sort of omnichannel strategy that allows them to meet their consumer and their customer wherever they are in as convenient a manner as possible.

Paul Solman:

So, in-store experience married to online convenience, it's how all the retailers we spoke to are trying to buck this season's un-merry trend: slower sales than expected.

For the "PBS NewsHour," Paul Solman in Takoma Park, Maryland, and reading about the elevator wars back home in Boston.