Interviewee: Angela Peterson, Indianapolis, IN
Interviewer: Haley Price, Amherst, MA
Date of Interview: October 5th, 2020, Via Zoom
Subject: Owning a small business during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Haley Price: This is Haley Price. Today is October 5th, 2020. I’m interviewing Angela Peterson for the Hampshire College COVID-19 Oral History Archive. This interview is taking place over Zoom and is sponsored by Hampshire College and is part of the First Year Seminar, Pandemics. So, do you mind telling me where you’re located right now?
Angela Peterson: Me personally or the store?
Haley Price: You personally.
Angela Peterson: I am at my home in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Haley Price: Okay, awesome. And I am at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Could you please give me your permission to include this interview, both audio and visual formats, in the COVID-19 Oral History Archive?
Angela Peterson: You have my permission.
Haley Price: So, we’re just going to start with some basic biographical information. What year were you born?
Angela Peterson: 1965.
Haley Price: Okay! And where are you from?
Angela Peterson: Indianapolis, Indiana.
Haley Price: Okay. What’s your occupation? And how many years have you …?
Angela Peterson: I am a small business owner and I have owned the business for 2 years.
Haley Price: Tell me about your jewelry store.
Angela Peterson: It is a small — what’s typically called a “mom and pop” brick and mortar store. It’s about 1600 square ft, and about a thousand square feet of that is show room. We sell retail, high end retail jewelry. We repair it. We buy and sell and trade gold, gemstones, sterling silver, things like that. We have a watch repair and appraisals and everything you’d expect from a brick and mortar store.
Haley Price: Do you have any employees? And how many?
Angela Peterson: I have three part-time employees. And I have three 1099 employees, which means that they’re not technically my employees. They work for me as adjunct professionals.
Haley Price: Okay. What would you say your biggest concerns were in regards to your store when the pandemic started?
Angela Peterson: Honestly, I wasn’t so much worried about catching it or exposing my clients to it. I was more worried about clients being afraid to actually come into the store. I feel like I can control who comes in, how well I clean, what products I use, that sort of thing. So, I wasn’t really worried about spreading it. I was just worried that people weren’t going to buy jewelry in a pandemic.
Haley Price: Were you able to utilize any sort of online platform to kind of make up for social distancing?
Angela Peterson: Yes and no. I have a website that you can buy off of, and I do think that some of my clients looked at it. And then they would call the store, ask if it was available, but no purchases were actually made online. I don’t even think that the people who called actually made the purchases. But, to that end, my clientele is mostly older than 50 and I don’t think that … for the most part, they don’t buy jewelry online. They don’t buy cars online. High-end items I think they want to come in and actually look at.
Haley Price: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. So, did you have to close down the store completely?
Angela Peterson: Yes. The state ordered us to close down on, I think … March 23rd was the day that the order came down. And we didn’t reopen until May the 12th, so it was about seven weeks or so.
Haley Price: What was it like reopening the store again?
Angela Peterson: It was a challenge because during the seven weeks that we were shut down, we actually had a burglary. They cut a hole through the roof of the building and tried to get into the safe to steal jewelry. They didn’t get into it, but they did about $20,000 worth of property damage. So, in order to reopen the store, we had to fix what was the problem in the back of the store, and then move things back into position and then do a deep thorough cleaning from all of the trash that had been around the store during the break-in and all that sort of thing. So, it was a mess. But, it was really clean when it was done.
Haley Price: Yeah, that’s scary. That must’ve been really hard to deal with. And I know you said that it cost about $20,000. And with having to shut down the store, were you able to receive any sort of funding from the government?
Angela Peterson: I did apply for and receive a PPP loan. Because I’m new to the business, they used the last 4 quarters of my payroll to predict how much money I would need, but because in the early days of my business, it was just me working and I wasn’t paying myself, I received a total of $330,000 and I used it all for payroll.
Haley Price: Oh, wow. And going back to the employees: did you have to lay off or furlough any of them?
Angela Peterson: Well, during the shutdown, nobody was really allowed out of the house, so I wasn’t paying them during the shutdown time. One of them did apply for unemployment, one of them is a retiree who gets a pension, so she did not apply for unemployment, and the third part-timer is my son who lives at home and had all of his needs taken care of.
Haley Price: Okay. How would you say, after reopening, social distancing affected your relationship with your customers?
Angela Peterson: It’s been.. it’s been varied. We have some customers who are wearing a mask, and they’re not coming within 6 feet, they’ll lay whatever it is on the counter and they will walk away from it while I touch it and write it up. We have other people who walk into the store and say “Do I have to wear this mask?” And they’re not, they don’t care about social distancing, they don’t seem to anyway. They’re not asking me what my protocols are. I mean they can see what I’m doing but they’re not asking, “What else do you need me to do?” or “How do you clean the jewelry?” or whatever. Ironically, I had a woman come in with gloves on and a face mask. And she needed her ring sized. So, she tried on my ring sizer, but then it was too small and she couldn’t get it off. So, she took off her mask and licked her finger and handed me back the ring sizer. Like that’s not going to spread COVID. So, I don’t think people are thinking about it as a real disease. I think they’re doing what they think they need to be doing to protect themselves, but not necessarily to protect others.
Haley Price: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I would say I’ve seen, maybe not to that degree, but definitely similar circumstances.
Angela Peterson: Yeah, and people lick their fingers to get rings off all the time. It’s disgusting. But, to remove your mask, lick it, and then hand it to me like it’s not going to have disease on it! I don’t know. It’s gross.
Haley Price: Yeah. That’s crazy. So, what would you say are the most noticeable differences in running your business pre-COVID and now?
Angela Peterson: Traffic really is the biggest thing. January and February are typically not the busiest months in the jewelry industry, and my January and February were huge. March was a little bit slower and then, of course, we shut it down. And when we reopened in mid May, it’s been a very slow start. At first, it was just a few people a day. It’s getting better, but it’s not back to where it should be yet.
Haley Price: And how would you say having to shut down, and then reopen, and then have to deal with the burglary affect the store financially?
Angela Peterson: Financially, I figure that, at minimum, I probably lost about $46,000. And that would just be comparing it with last year’s numbers. If I had extrapolated through March, April, and May, with the January/February from this year – we’re probably looking at closer to $60,000.
Haley Price: Oh, wow. And how have you gone about dealing with that?
Angela Peterson: Well, the same way everyone has. You just cut corners where you can cut back. We didn’t buy, I’m worried about what Christmas is going to bring and so I didn’t buy a lot of extra boxes. So, if we run out of boxes, I don’t know what we’re gonna do. I make an emergency order I guess. But, the boxes typically come from China so there’s a tariff on them, and then people were worried that there’s virus on them. If we don’t order from China then typically they come from India, and India’s experiencing a surge in the virus right now. And so, I don’t really want boxes from India shipped to me. So, I’m cutting corners that way…. October 1st was my beginning of my third year owning the store, and I should have given everyone, including myself, a raise but I’m not able to do that.
Haley Price: Yeah, that sounds like it is really hard to have to deal with. I know you said you get things sourced out, would you say that a lot of your, like does your jewelry come from local jewelry-makers?
Angela Peterson: For the most part, my two biggest sources are a place called Quality Gold in Cincinnati, Ohio, or one of their distribution centers, the closest one is Cincinnati. And the other one is in Lafayette, Louisiana, It’s called Stuller, and both of those places were shut down during COVID, so it’s not like we could’ve ordered anything even if we had had orders. And then, I have a local diamond vendor, the diamonds mostly are coming through India these days, but my jewelers are both local and they both do custom designs. So, even if I don’t order a ring from Stuller, I can ask Jeff to make one, and so that’s local. I would say that I have found more local places because I didn’t want to special order things. Saving on postage is a big deal, every time I order diamonds in for a customer to look at, whether they buy them or not, I’m out $40. So, I’m just trying really hard to keep things within budget.
Haley Price: Yeah, absolutely. And with some of your sources being more local, how would you say the pandemic has affected that with them obviously having to deal with their own issues?
Angela Peterson: Well, for the Stuller company in Louisiana, not only did they have pandemic but then they had the hurricane. And so, they were shut down. I do think that they did a great job of, they would have minimal, like a skeleton staff in the warehouse pulling orders. And they would work in shifts, and there was a cleaning crew between the shifts. And then they probably figured that maybe with better PPE equipment, that they could use more people. At one point, they were almost at 85%. That’s when the hurricane came through and so they went back down to like 60%. Things have been a little slower getting to me, which my customers are not thrilled about, but it doesn’t really affect them that much. They’re just used to quicker service.
Haley Price: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. Everything’s stalled a little bit.
Angela Peterson: Right. I do think that using local people though, like my local jewelers, and watch-maker, and things like that, keeps money flowing in my community, which is very important.
Haley Price: Yeah, cause you’re helping support that local business community, and especially with everything that’s going on. So, would you say there’s anything positive that’s come out of having to experience this?
Angela Peterson: Yes, I think that there’s a lot of positive actually. On a personal level, I live in a neighborhood where there are lots of kids, and the families would sit 6 feet apart on the cul de sac with a firepit in the middle, and glasses of wine, and they would sit out there. They’d be socially distanced, but they were together more than I’ve ever seen the neighbors get together. The kids ride their bikes, they’re out in the fresh air, they’re socially distanced. And there’s much more going on outside whereas typically, even in the hottest days of summer, kids are inside on video games and things like that. So, I think that the kids have more free time now that school is partially online, which I think is great. I think families have a chance to eat dinner together and get to know each other again, and I think all that’s great. I’ve had a chance to really take a hard look at my business and see where I can save money, where I need to put money into it, things like that. So, I think there’s been some good to it. Financially, it’s not been good, but sometimes you need to take a step back to move a step or two forward.
Haley Price: Yeah, definitely. And what would you say has been one of the biggest realizations in regards to your business that has come out of —
Angela Peterson: One of the biggest what?
Haley Price: Realizations that you’ve had about maybe something to change.
Angela Peterson: Well, on a personal level again. I was a music teacher for 20 years before I bought the store, and I didn’t have a whole lot of business experience. And so, … the biggest realization is that I’m smarter than I gave myself credit for. I’m more creative than I gave myself credit for. And even though I’m in my mid-fifties, I’m still able to get out there and do something and be positive and make it work. The other realization I think is that, on a political level, you can tell almost by who’s wearing a mask and who isn’t, who’s Republican and [who’s] Democrat. And people will say “Oh, well I think it’s all a hoax,” or “You need to put a mask on,” or – it’s really divisive. But, my best customers were the first ones back in the door. And so, I think on a business level, I realized that maybe 20% of my customers are purchasing 50% percent of my … I need to treat them better because they’re doing the most purchasing, I guess is what I’m trying to say.
Haley Price: Yeah, that definitely makes sense that you’d be able to see who the more loyal customers are. Okay, so we’ve gone over quite a bit. And so, I was wondering if there was anything you wanted to add, or something we kind of skimmed over?
Angela Peterson: No, I don’t think so. I think business is picking up. September was a pretty good month and someone compared it recently to a freight train. It starts out slow, but once it gets moving, it’s gonna be hard to stop. So, I’m really hopeful that that’s the way the economy is gonna go. Once it gets moving again, it’s gonna be hard to stop.
Haley Price: Yeah, definitely. I mean it seems like things are getting better overall. So, I guess all we can do is hope that it keeps going that way.
Angela Peterson: Right. Right.
Haley Price: Okay, so, thank you for this interview. I really enjoyed talking to you about this. I’m gonna stop the recording, but you should go ahead and stay in the call and I’ll be right with you.
Angela Peterson: Okay.