Mark Young has been in what he likens to the “hospitality business” for 33 years, selling costumes, disguises, face masks, balloons and novelties to Upper Valley customers for holiday events, from masquerade parties to Halloween, Valentine’s Day, New Year’s and school graduations.
His 6,000-square-foot store, CostuMania in LaValley’s Colonial Plaza in West Lebanon, carries more than 100,000 items on two floors.
“The Gulf War in 1991 was tough,” Young said last week, recalling other periods when his store had weathered severe drops in business. “Then there was 9/11 in 2001 and the recession in 2009 when things slowed down. … COVID is different. This is the worst year ever, to put it mildly.”
Young, like owners of other stores and businesses at Colonial Plaza and in the shopping plazas along Route 12A, has managed to hang on since the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic hit in March. But as a second wave sweeps through the country, he worries his store could soon hit a breaking point.
“If we have to go home again,” Young said, referring to the earlier shutdown for nonessential businesses ordered earlier this year, “then I am out of business.”
To people driving through the heart of the Upper Valley’s shopping corridor, Colonial Plaza, with its collection of 14 stores and businesses in three separate buildings, may not seem much different than any of the other shopping centers along the half-mile stretch.
But whereas other plazas are populated with far-flung chain stores and owned by national commercial property companies, Colonial Plaza — both the property and the businesses — are locally owned. Included are a restaurant, a formal wear shop, a barber, an antiques and curiosities shop, a manicurist, a hairstylist, a franchised auto mechanic, an awards engraver, a coin and gold buyer, a picture frame shop and — for one month every year — a Christmas tree vendor.
“We’re mom-and-pops. Small businesses,” Young said. “No one is backing us up.”
Bill Avery, owner of Copy World, which prints plans for builders and architects and relocated his business from Glen Road Plaza on the north side of Interstate 89 to Colonial Plaza last year, said he has witnessed through his windows both the businesses that are doing OK during the pandemic and those that are struggling.
For example, Avery said the contractor trucks pulling into the parking lot every morning to pick up building materials and equipment from LaValley Building Supply — which also owns Colonial Plaza — have been very active.
“It’s great to see how busy they are,” Avery said, noting that his printing business, which serves builders and contractors, has also held steady.
(LaValley’s owner Larry Huot did not return messages for comment.)
But at the costume shop, Young estimated his sales are down 40% for the year. After trying a storewide 30%-off sale, he slashed prices 50%.
“I’m basically selling everything at cost now,” Young said.
With the pandemic making many people wary of going out in public, many of the plaza store owners say they are seeing less traffic, especially walk-in customers.
Lisa Tibbits, who owns Red Roof Frame Shop, said she has experienced “a drastic drop in the number of people coming through the door, especially since Vermont borders shut down, where a lot of my older customers come from.”
To offset a decline in sales that she estimates at 40%, Tibbits has both curtailed the hours she is in the store — “closing an hour earlier, not staying late, not coming in on my hours off on the weekend” — and lowered the heat while she is in the store in order to reduce her electricity bill.
“If I know someone is coming in, I’ll blast the heat,” Tibbits said.
Although her rent was forgiven for a couple months, Tibbits said that with the usual expected post-holiday slowdown, she is worried about the coming months.
“I’m scared. I’m a single mother, self-employed. I have no backup system. It’s quite frightening,” she said.
Adjacent to Tibbits’ store is manicurist Kathy Trieu, who with her husband, Alexander Pham, has run the Perfect Nails nail salon at Colonial Plaza for 12 years.
Trieu said she and her husband used to each see 10 clients per day; now there are only enough appointments to keep Trieu herself working. She is accepting appointments only and no walk-ins, working one day less a week and one hour less per day.
“I had a big boom right after (the shutdown) lifted with people catching up” but since then customers have slacked off, Trieu said, who added out of caution that she is not taking new clients at this time and seeing only “regular customers who have been coming for years.”
Eric Hector, owner of The Yankee Barber, closed for two months and when he reopened on May 11, “I had a big burst of business as people caught up, but then it leveled off but instead of growing kept going down as people were listening to the news.” His business is down by half.
Hector doesn’t like wearing a mask, although he will wear one if customers request it. He said he wasn’t sure whether that has had an effect on customers willing to come through the door. As a customer walked in last week, he made the offer.
“Nah, that’s OK,” replied the customer.
The pandemic has had a comparatively lighter impact on James Olin Salon, located next to CostuMania.
Owner Andrea Slayton said business has crawled back to 80% of pre-pandemic levels. Her salon of eight stylists has seen just short of 3,000 clients in the 30 weeks since reopening after the shutdown last May.
She thinks her salon has held up relatively well due partly to an influx of new customers, which she attributes to people who have fled the cities and suburbs for more rural areas to reduce their risk of exposure to the virus.
“We get emails, phone calls: ‘Hi, I’ve moved to the area. Are you open?’ ” Slayton said. “That’s been happening a lot.”
One business at the plaza, however, is not having any problem attracting customers.
Every year Lyme tree farmer Ben Nichols sets up a Christmas tree stand in the parking lot between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
He declined to say how many trees he’s been selling but said “we’re on track to do what we did last year.”
Nichols said customers have been driving from distant places such as Keene and Williamstown, Vt., to buy trees from him this year, saying that sellers have run out of Christmas trees in their communities.
“People are cooped up. They want to get out and bring nature and a little joy indoors,” Nichols said.
“I’ve had people tell me they had artificial trees and this year wanted to get a natural tree. Normally they are too busy to think about it. But this year everyone has a lot of time.”
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
