Businesses hope to ‘bounce back’ over summer

By Sian Bayley, local democracy reporter

We’re quickly approaching a year since the first lockdown was announced, shutting down local businesses across the country.

It’s been a hugely difficult year for shop owners, who have had to navigate various lockdowns and new, Covid-safe, ways of operating.

Elizabeth Jones, 41, is the owner of Natural for Baby on Balham High Street.

She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that during the third lockdown she is now averaging just one order a day through click and collect.

“It isn’t great, but it’s better than nothing. I’ve had 29 orders over January. So you kind of think, yes, it’s not amazing, but it’s better than not selling things,” she said.

When the first lockdown was announced she took her products home and stored them in her loft conversion, only taking them out for delivery to people who had ordered online.

Since the November lockdown, however, she has been allowed to run a click-and-collect service from the shop, which also serves as a UPS Access Point for Balham.

“I’ve mostly been doing 99 per cent of the UPS Access Point stuff, making you know, 30p here and 60p there,” said Elizabeth.

Looking back over the past year, she said there have been a lot of ups and downs.

“From March to June, I was quite happy that I did get web sales. I mean, it wasn’t a tremendous amount, but considering we were in a lockdown, and it was all new, I thought it was quite nice.

“It was actually nice to deliver to customers and find out that they had a baby and that sort of thing. So that was kind of a nice, pleasant sort of time, even though it was a weird one.

“When I reopened in the middle of June, it was actually not going too badly at all here. People have, on the whole, been good with having a face mask on, using the antibacterial gel, and all that sort of thing.

“But everyone could see that the infection rates were rising in the autumn.

“It’s been a permanent lockdown really. I mean, I haven’t seen a lot of my family, I’ve got some family that are shielding. I haven’t obviously been able to go in their house, even when we were allowed back in the summer. So yes, it’s a very weird one.”

She’s particularly aware that as a baby shop, many of her customers could be shielding.

“You know, the great-grandmothers and the pregnant customers.  I do get a mixture of people here. This weekend and last weekend I had two new fathers that had just had babies a few days old, and they were just frustrated they couldn’t come in, just to buy something. They had to go on my website and do click and collect. You have to go through the system, don’t you. That’s the law.”

She hopes there will be a bounce back this summer, when more people have had the vaccine.

“I mean, obviously the news has been great that the vaccine is out and being rolled out. My parents have both been done. So it gives us that hope, people will hopefully be confident to be able to come out when we are allowed. But then there is that worry that not everyone will be done until the autumn.

“You do some of those vaccine calculators and it says you might not be done until January next year and you’re just thinking ‘oh gosh’ because really that’s our only way out of it, isn’t it? It’s just not knowing.”

But there has been joy even in the darkest of times.

In her own family, there are two lockdown babies en route – life really does go on.

“That, for the baby shop, is obviously good, but it is the frustration of people not being able to visit these babies when they are born,” said Elizabeth.

“My shop is very gifty, and so it really does depend on the rules. I mean there were little pockets where people could have their baby showers on a common and that sort of thing, but that’s all gone now.

“I haven’t sold a christening item for ages because I think there was a very, very short window where christenings could happen.”

She says that since March last year, she has only sold one card online.

“I feel bad because the cards I sell are small businesses where I sell their stuff. So if I can’t sell it, that’s another small business that has that impact,” she said.