KAUKAUNA, Wis. — It’s a Tuesday morning and Michael Bray is at work screen printing t-shirts and sweatshirts for one of his customers.
“I specialize in the smaller orders, which is nice because they can get six pieces, ten pieces, twelve pieces, where some of the bigger guys won’t take that,” said Bray, who is the owner of Designerz Ink in downtown Kaukauna.
Like many businesses across the state, he estimates the business saw sales dip 15% to 20% in 2020 as the “Safer At Home” mandate was put into place five years ago.
Bray considers himself fortunate compared to other businesses that closed during the pandemic, including some of his customers.
“A few of the restaurants I made apparel for, they’ve shut down and never made it back,” he said. “Most of the bars stuck around. Luckily, they were doing a lot of to-go orders, those that did do food.”
Gov. Tony Evers enacted "Safer at Home" on March 25, 2020, to slow the spread of the virus and help the health care systems handle COVID-19 cases in addition to the regular flow of patients.
The early days of "Safer at Home" saw Lu Ann Vander Zanden of Bridal Elegance & Formalwear delivering dresses to customers differently.
“Like everyone else, we were completely shutdown but we still had inventory coming in and we still had bridal gowns and mother’s gowns that were ordered that were going to be delivered,” she said. “We had to change our way of thinking and set up appointments through our telephones and meet them curbside for pickup.”
Long term, the pandemic has changed a lot about her businesses.
Vander Znden said online sales, shifts to less formal wedding venues and smaller weddings parties continue to impact the business.
She still has stock from five years ago.
“We are by-appointment only yet. I went down from 13 employees to three,” Vander Zander said. “After COVID they didn’t want to come back... Losing the employees really hurt.”
Many businesses around the state say community support got them through the tough times.
Bray said that continues today.
“I see a lot of people who come in now who say, ‘I want to stay local. I want to support local,’ because we did lose quite a few businesses. Even on my street here,” he said. “I do feel like people are backing local businesses a lot more since the pandemic.”
