HAMILTON, Ohio—As retailers begin to reopen this week, many have come up with new ways for their customers to shop while staying safe and healthy. 

• Petals and Wicks had to come up with new ways to keep it customers and employees safe and healthy
• Instead of smelling each candle, each candle scent will have disposable scent sticks instead
• The store will also be enforcing social distancing and allowing reservations only for candle pouring

Many retailers are having to be creative in order to reopen this week. That includes Petals and Wicks in Hamilton. It’s a candle store, and at candle stores of course you want to smell them. But they had to come up with a new idea. And that is smelling the scent on a scent stick instead of picking up candles and smelling it yourself.

Walking into a candle store, all you want to do is smell them. But in the age of COVID-19- that’s no longer healthy or acceptable. 

“Candles, you smell it right?" Sherry Hoskins the owner of Petals and Wicks said. "Any of our body products you want to smell it. We’ve even took some precautions on our body products. We used to just have a band around our soap and people would pick it up by the band. Well now everything is shrink-wrapped and has our band on it because we don’t want any touching of any of our products.”

For Hoskins, she’s tried to think of everything to keep her employees and her customers safe when the doors open again.

“Every aspect, every touch, everything we do here, we’ve tried to think about what we could change in order to make it safer for our staff and our customers," she said.

Those changes include the scent sticks, reservations only for candle pouring, six customers shopping at a time as well as employees wearing masks.

“People are excited, they’re ready to go out," Hoskins said. "But they also want to do it safely. So we’re going to try to accommodate every shopper out there.”

While some are wary of the re-opening of businesses during this time, Hoskins sees it as an opportunity to find the best way to serve her customers.

“I feel like it’s the right thing to do to open up," she said. "But we have to do it safely. We can’t go back to business as normal.”

Hoskins says she’s just looking forward to having people come through her store again and to spread a little joy during this season.

“To get our doors back open and see the happy, smiling faces again- this is a happy place, so we’re happy to get back to some sort of happy place here," she said.

Petals and Wicks is opening on Friday. Hoskins says they just need a little bit more time to ensure the safety of their employees and their customers.