DES MOINES, Iowa — The snowy weather and cold weeks in January led to a decrease in sales for some Iowa businesses.
Now, local shops are back open and interacting with customers to hopefully bridge the sales gap in the final weeks of the month.
“When we got to the first storm, which was probably about [Jan. 6], we were doing okay up until that point, and then we just took a nose dive," said Nate Niceswanger, owner of Zzz Records in Des Moines. "It was hard for people to get out of their driveways, streets weren’t getting plowed very quickly, and then that second storm hit and it just got a lot worse at that point."
While businesses were closed for a few days, they needed to find creative ways to interact with customers.
Linzi Murray, the owner of Reading in Public, said the shop has gotten innovative when it comes to keeping business going in inclement weather.
“It’s been hard, but we do the best we can. We did find out ways to engage online, we had just an online chat on Instagram live, just to keep the conversation going about books," Murray told Local 5.
Zzz Records is coming off a busy holiday season, and the business values customer interaction, with 90% percent of their business coming from in-person sales.
Despite being used to the slower winter months, this year the impacts have been doubly felt due to the extreme weather.
"I think that it was just magnified this year because we had two of them that were so big within a few days of each other, that's what really seemed to kill business," Niceswanger said. "And then the following week after the storms, we had the ridiculously low temperatures."
Reading in Public Bookstore and Café wanted to keep its employees working, so the owners implemented creative, interactive activities on social media.
However, despite online efforts, the business still relies on the in-person experience.
"The whole premise of our business is to get books into people's hands," Murray said. "So, it's just not the same [online]. You can scroll and scroll and scroll online to buy books, but you can't talk to book sellers, you can't smell the books, feel the pages. So sales have gone down, of course, because you don't have that experience."
But Des Moines' businesses are back open and happy to be engaging with the customers as warmer weather is on the way.