On March 23, Gov. Doug Ducey issued an executive order allowing only essential businesses to remain open. The order is proactive and follows national and CDC guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This has resulted in dozens of downtown Phoenix businesses closing down altogether, temporarily or for some restaurants, only remaining open for to-go and delivery orders.
In the executive order Ducey said, “Arizona is focused on limiting the spread of COVID-19, while providing relief to families, individuals and businesses impacted.”
The order resulted in a massive increase in unemployment for workers, some on a temporary basis while permanent for others. According to the Arizona Department of Economic Security 579,316 total Arizonans filed for unemployment, or 11.6% of Arizona’s workforce.
At first, Arizona’s executive order excluded tattoo parlors, nail and hair salons. They are now considered nonessential and are required to remain closed.
Rudy Jaime from tattoo parlor Electrik Needle said that the parlor’s main priority became paying their own bills as well as their artists’.
Jaime said that the shop had to become creative in how they make money.
“We have hosted raffles to make income right now, so we can continue to pay our rent. We have also began doing more commissioned art pieces, but people aren’t really in the mood to be spending money on art, as it isn’t a priority,” he said.
However, he fears the income might not be enough.
“We are taking it one day at a time and hope that it will end soon. We can only hold out for so long. We cannot sustain not working for very much longer,” he said.
Sarah Bingham, the co-owner of vintage clothing retailer Antique Sugar, said the store had a little more notice and tried to prepare in the best way possible.
“We had a staff meeting about 2 weeks before we closed to plan for maintaining sales if we did have to close our door. We tried to be proactive about it. Now we’re ramping up our online sales,” Bingham said.
In fact, she said she feels this pandemic has taught her an important business strategy. To keep store employees’ hours up, she had them work as models for the store’s clothing and take over the shop’s Instagram account, with an increased focus on online sales. She said that the income from online sales was unexpected.
“Now that I see how much extra revenue we could potentially produce focusing on our online sales, we will definitely continue doing that one the pandemic is over,” she said.
However, Antique Sugar was still hit hard by the executive order.
“In downtown Phoenix, we totally just got our tourism season ripped out from under us. In my shop we have big business in the spring, with people coming in from out of town and prom, then we bank those funds as much as we can to get us through the slow summer months,” Bingham said.
She noted that a Saturday in March can normally net thousands of dollars in sales, but the last Saturday the store was open there were only two customers who came into the store before 3 p.m.
For David Maxwell, owner of Golden Rule Tattoo, the security of his employees’ jobs became a top priority for him.
“We told our employees early on that no one’s job would be at risk if they didn’t feel comfortable working under the circumstances,” Maxwell said.
Maxwell said that one of the largest struggles facing small businesses now is finding governmental support and navigating that system.
“I’m a fire chief as my day job, and we have to fill out a lot of paperwork throughout the work week. Still though, filling out some of the forms for small business support are more exhausting,” he said.
Other businesses haven’t gotten any money from the government support system.
“We have applied for all of the small business loans we can, but we have not gotten any help from governmental agencies to support us during this time. If we are not working, we are not making money,” said Jaime of Electrik Needle.
Contact the reporter at Abschief@asu.edu.
