‘Quarantining clothes’: Retail stores reopen

More retail stores are set to open to customers Tuesday after months of being restricted to online orders and curbside pickup.

But customers can expect the shopping experience to be a little different from what it was like at the beginning of the year.

Michelle Strawford, who owns Bella Chic Fashion Decor in White City and Moose Jaw, said she and her sales staff have been hard at work preparing to reopen to customers in White City first.

“We’re going to be as safe as we can be and follow all the rules that we’ve been given but our feeling overwhelmingly is one of excitement,” Strawford said.

Strawford took the first major financial blow from COVID-19 as the organizer of the What Women Want show, which was shut down five hours into the event. Then days later, the stores had to close and she had to lay off 17 part-time workers.

“I carried the weight and the panic of, ‘Am I going to have a store when this is over? Am I going to have two stores when this is over?’ We refunded all of the vendors at What Women Want and it was incredibly financially taxing because I still had expenses to pay,” Strawford said.

As the clothing retail business shifted entirely to online orders and curbside pickup, Strawford was thankful to see the trend of supporting local business grow on social media.

“People are so much more cognizant of the local businesses and what it means to have them in their community and the reality that if the support isn’t there they just won’t be there,” Strawford said.

While online sales have actually done much better than Strawford was expecting, she said there isn’t any doubt that opening the doors will be much better for business.

With the excitement of reopening comes nerves about how it will all work. Strawford has figured out the store can safely hold seven customers at one time and guidelines and signs will be posted on the door about safety precautions and social distancing.

“We’ll have hand sanitizer at the till (and) we’ll be wiping down the doors and the pay station,” Strawford said. “We actually are playing with a table today to see if perhaps we can build social distancing through something like that.”

As a fashion retailer, Strawford brought together other business owners to call on the government to change the initial rules about not allowing people to try on clothes and not accepting returns, describing those rules as “crippling” to the business model.

“I started calling and emailing our government and bringing together retail businesses to help and thankfully now we can accept returns cautiously and try-ons cautiously,” Strawford explained.

“We will try to limit trying on, try to limit touching, but let’s be honest: In the clothing industry, in the fashion world, it’s about touching the fabric and people want to see it — and how do you look at a piece of clothing without holding it?”

Under the updated guidelines, the store will keep bins for each day to “quarantine” any clothes customers try on and don’t buy for three days before steaming them to restock the racks.

“We’ll make do,” she said. “We’re just so happy to have people in our store, so we’ll make it work.”

The week before opening day, Strawford posted on social media asking customers if they feel safe coming back to shop in person and the overwhelming majority said yes.