Some days you just can't.
But when you're held to a higher standard than the heating and cooling company, and you can't resign, you still have to. Here are 8 pro tips for how!
Welcome. I’m Katherine Raz. I own a shop in Tacoma, Washington called The Fernseed and this is my newsletter about running an independent retail business in the age of Amazon, Covid, etc. If you’re a shop owner, or you sell products to small retail businesses, or you’re just curious what this whole business is about, you’re in the right place. (And if this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive it yourself right here. It’s free!)
Sharing this newsletter helps me build a community of people around this type of content, so please think about tweeting it, posting it to your Facebook, or emailing it to someone you think would get value from it. Thanks!
I’ve been working on a redesign of one of our locations, so I’m thinking a lot about what makes a good store layout. I was going to write some practical advice last week about how when you’re setting up shop for the first time, what you think will work often doesn’t, and furnishing the shop turns into this ongoing process that never feels done. Instead, I did a lot of reading the news on my phone on the floor of the bathroom.
The more I read, the weirder it felt to write about retail furnishings. I kept thinking about the Ukrainian couple living in the lowest level of a parking garage with their kids, who are the same age as my kids, and the reporter who asked their mother why she was crying. I thought, “What a strange question. Isn’t it obvious why she’s crying?” But she answered: because the building across the street was bombed, and it was a beautiful building. Everyone, I suppose, has their own method of detachment.
It’s not that I think it’s inappropriate to write about how to furnish a retail store while Russia is invading Ukraine. It’s just that, probably because my battery is running low after a big floral holiday, I felt particularly challenged to do anything “despite everything else happening,” because I’ve been keeping calm and carrying on for the better part of two years, and some days, I succumb to the languishing.
Maybe we’ve all been feeling this a little bit. It’s the great resignation, right? The what-even-is-the-point-of-what-I’m-doing-in-the-face-of-this-ness? Only when you run a small business (one that might be carrying a little bit of debt on the books), you can’t resign. So I practice mini resignations by deciding it’s okay to skip a newsletter and lie on the floor of the bathroom playing Wordle because I can’t figure out how to say “big things are happening, but here’s a practical how-to post anyway.”
But it got me thinking. Anyone who has a job to do, or creative work to share with the world, occasionally has to reconcile doing it in the face of chaos and tragedy. Sometimes the world demands that we do it as a collective act of defiance or a return to normalcy, like workers returning to a federal building after a bombing. Other times, tragedy forces us to question the purpose of our vocations in the face of it, especially when the nature of our work, at least on the surface, appears frivolous. I think of comedians who struggled with how to compose stand-up sets in the aftermath of 9-11, and how, twenty years later, it’s not just the comedians and performers who have to take the stage after the world implodes, it’s everyone. The stages we inhabit now are virtual, 24-hour content factories, so anyone who posts regularly on Instagram, or TikTok, or a blog, will inevitably have to face the cognitive overload the post-911 comedians faced: is this truly a situation where the show must go on? And if it must, what on earth do I say in the face of all this tragedy? Do I just go on posting about macramé plant hangers? Is that horrifically insensitive now?
In a “normal” week, we don’t ponder if posting an Instagram reel about pottery making or designing stationery feels out of context, we just post our content, hope it builds an audience, and sell some stuff. Ten years ago we weren’t posting daily mini press releases in the form of social media posts, but now that we have access to a platform we use in good times for promotion, we have the added responsibility of figuring out how to use that platform when the world feels off balance.
Independent retail shops have unique social visibility in communities, so we feel this pressure more than, say, a heating and cooling business. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—it’s a movement in the right direction to ask if the businesses we spend money with align with our values—but I do think we hold little storefront businesses to a higher standard. No one expects a home repair contractor to write the occasional socially-conscious Instagram post. Warby Parker? Yes. But Warby Parker probably has a marketing department 20 people deep. I am one person, lying on the floor of my bathroom.
For some shop owners, finding the right approach—and right words—to speak out in the face of tragedy and injustice comes easily. Many of us have had the experience of seeing someone use their business platform to say just the right thing, at just the right time, and wished we could have posted something as pointed and eloquent. Often it’s not because we don’t share those sentiments, or we’re afraid of upsetting customers who don’t share them, but because we’re too mired in our day-to-day operations to mold those feelings into something coherent. We can’t all be Ben & Jerry’s. But some days I feel like I probably should, just to justify being here, on this planet, in the face of everything, and still sell plants and flowers. Never mind that my shop’s entire annual revenue is what Ben & Jerry’s makes in two days.
Some days I do use our business platform to write about injustice, or the world as I see it, and maybe on those days I look like the type of business owner who has the certainty of knowing what to say in those moments. But I don’t have that certainty — not of my convictions, but that it’s the place of a business owner who isn’t doing much but sharing a viewpoint to share that viewpoint on a platform where we also sell things. Is that not the definition of performative activism, and am I engaging in it? Is it better to be vocal, even without activist boots on the ground, than silent? I think yes, but every time I open my mouth on an issue via our shop’s social media channels, I prepare for that backlash.
The natural answer here is to do both, right? Talk the talk, and walk the walk. But this is asking a lot of small business owners who are already handling a lot. The pandemic. Supply chain issues. Labor shortages. Cash flow. Folding the clean laundry that’s been sitting in the basket for 17 days. On top of what I’m already doing, do I also have time to enact social and political change?
Activists and small business owners do have one thing in common: understanding the pitfalls of burn out, and needing to constantly check in to prevent it from happening. So even though it feels like we may not have time to save the world and sell enough product to pay the bills, shop owners are actually in a good position to pair activist work with the day-to-day of running a business. Both involve incremental improvements over long stretches of time.
Showing up day after day in the face of uncertainty and mounting obstacles is something business owners are already good at. We don’t have to lead activist work, but we can find ways to incorporate it into the long haul work we’re already doing. This slow drive, of pushing the boulder of change up the mountain of injustice, doesn’t play well on Instagram, a platform that loves quick fixes and easy answers. But if you’ve woven some type of activism into the fabric of your operations, it doesn’t have to—that work is evident in other ways. I have found that doing the actual work takes anxiety out of the decision to speak out or not on social media, because I know we are contributing to a solution whether I’m choosing to talk about it or not.
This isn’t to say that unless you are incorporating activist work into your business you have no place to speak up. I’m also saying that running a small business—especially right now—is all consuming, and that work in and of itself is probably enough of a contribution. It’s okay to not have the bandwidth for more. But over the years I have found a few ways to contribute that take little effort and, because of our visibility, have an impact.
Here are some examples:
In the summer of 2020, we asked our followers to make a donation to a short list of organizations in our community working on housing justice. The call to action was to send us the receipt of their donation, and we would send the customer a gift card to our shop that matched their donation amount. We raised $5,255 for local organizations, and while we gave away the same amount in gift cards to those who donated, the cost to us (because our profit margin is about 52%) was around $2,500.
We’ve done several food and hygiene drives for local organizations addressing food insecurity and housing justice. The most successful, I’m pained to say, have been those that offered a 20% off coupon to our shop for anyone who donated. When we hosted drives with no discount, we collected almost nothing. I’m happy to keep doing the discount if it means filling large boxes with non-perishable food and toothpaste.
In the summer of 2020 we partnered with a local graphic designer who designed and printed Black Lives Matter campaign signs for yards and windows. We paid the cost to have 50 printed, and gave them away to anyone who wanted one.
We’ve partnered with one of our ceramics vendors to give away their factory seconds (products that don’t meet their quality assurance requirements) as potted plant gifts to local nonprofits, most of which went to organizations that provide housing for refugees resettling in Washington.
But this list feels haphazard and imperfect. I wish I had a more cohesive, structured way of using our business to support initiatives I care about. But also: I have to run the business. And I’m just one person, lying on the floor of the bathroom sometimes. (Is the owner of the heating and cooling business lying on the floor of the bathroom?)
I don’t know. I guess on days when it feels like a lot, and I’m simultaneously examining the significant amount of privilege I have to be lying on the floor of my bathroom ruminating, while also resenting the assumption that it isn’t enough just to be a small business, that we have to engage in activism to justify our existence, but then beating myself up for that resentment when there is so much more to do, but then realizing I can’t do any of it from the bathroom floor, but I’m stuck on the bathroom floor because I’m exhausted from the keeping-calm-and-carrying-on of it all for the past two and a half years, I feel like I could use a jaunty little list of reminders to re-center everything.
So I’m making this for me. And I’m sharing it with you.
For the days when it’s all too much (but there’s still more work to do):
Know that simply running a small business that makes a hair's breadth of profit some days during a global pandemic is enough. Good work! Keep it up! Those little paper cuts you’re sawing into the achilles heel of Jeff Bezos are eventually going to cause the tendon to give way, right?
Recognize that it’s not my job to lead activist work, but that I can use our influence to point to those who are already doing it, if nothing else. (After all, that’s what re-posting other people’s grid content to Instagram stories is all about!)
Find simple ways to contribute that don’t tax me or the business operations, but allow maximum impact from minimal input. Keep improving them, find the ones that work best, and bake those into operations. Give people the 20% discount if it motivates them to donate a can of premium chicken breast!
Keep putting out the intention to be part of the solution, in whatever imperfect way you are doing it, and you will be called in to more opportunities to be a part of the solution. (I recently got invited—I think in response to an Instagram post I wrote—to be on the City of Tacoma’s participatory budget committee. I’m actually pretty thrilled about it.)
Recognize that no one does this perfectly, even though social media platforms sometimes make it feel like a few people are.
Surround myself with other business owners grappling with these questions and talk about it with them.
Remain open, and not defensive, if and when I’m called to do a better job. If you’re speaking up at all, you’re bound to do it imperfectly at some point. This is an opportunity to learn, not shrink back.
Recognize that the privilege of the platform carries with it responsibility, and not to ignore that responsibility. Show up to it, however imperfectly.
But it’s okay to just lie on the bathroom floor some days, too.
I’ll be back next week with some advice on furnishing a retail shop.