Excitement, confusion surrounds reopening of P.E.I. clothing stores

P.E.I.'s retail clothing stores will be able to reopen, with restrictions, when Phase 2 of the province's COVID-19 pandemic ease back comes into effect.

If all goes well, that will be on May 22. Shawna Perry is excited to open the doors of Little Black Dress Co. in Summerside again. It opened for the first time on Feb. 10 and had to close in the pandemic just a little more than a month later.

Perry said she has had enough success with online sales to get by.

"I went to the bank and I paid my last bill that I needed to pay and I realized that I just barely had enough to cover rent for May," she said.

"It was a huge realisation that, you know, we did this. My staff was volunteering at the store a few hours each week and we came together and we did this and it was just a super, super exciting moment that we realized we could do this and we could keep going."

It will be far from business as usual in Phase 2. Customers will not be allowed to try on clothes. As a consignment shop, Little Black Dress Co. will have the extra challenge of taking in used clothes.

In practising physical distancing, Perry will not be able to go through clothes with her customers. They will have to sit for 24 hours before she can touch them, and then she will go through them alone and contact the owner about what she is interested in.

She is still considering how to control traffic in the shop, and may be open by appointment only. She said the online sales will continue.

"We'd love to still be able to sell to those who still want to remain home for a little while, so we're definitely still going to continue with the online sales moving forward," she said.

It's hard being closed

Philip Tweel of Island Activewear in Charlottetown still hasn't decided if he will reopen during Phase 2.

Tweel shut the business entirely on March 17, and he said he's really missed it.

"It's painful. Painful. You don't like to stay home," said Tweel.

"Not seeing the consumer. That's been hard. Our customers eventually turn into our friends and people that we love and we miss the interaction."

But he sees limited opportunities for running a clothing store where people can't try things on. He expects it would lead to an increase in returns, and he doesn't know how he would handle those to make them safe.

Tweel said he still has some thinking to do about how he might operate the store under the Phase 2 restrictions.

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