More than a year after Courtney Keough Glazer closed her As You Wish boutique, the thing she misses the most is the social atmosphere of her retail store.

The shop sold upscale women’s clothing generally for women 45 and older. On Friday afternoons, clients and store staff would gather together for some wine and gossip. Customers visiting other stores in the shopping center would drop by the happy hour.

One fixture at happy hours was Artist-in-Residence Quincie Hamby, a small-business owner for about 30 years. She operated her jewelry shop and studio inside the boutique.

“You know, if I could figure out a business model that would allow me to have basically a clubhouse, a hangout, that would be great,” Glazer said.

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In early 2020, Glazer was searching for another location with a better parking layout. At the same time, she was finishing the last details of her youngest daughter’s wedding scheduled for leap day in February 2020. She had little idea what she would confront in the weeks and months ahead.

“Then they started closing things down,” she said. “Like at the beginning of March, weddings were getting canceled, big gatherings were getting canceled. All I could think is we dodged a bullet.”

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Glazer said she heard a little about positive COVID-19 cases around the time of the wedding. But it wasn’t until March, when the virus started ripping through Florida and other states, that she became really anxious. Many businesses switched to working from home and retail shops like hers closed, along with in-person dining at restaurants.

“I still had orders I had placed in the fall for spring merchandise,” she said. “I had to pay rent. There was no income coming in at all.”

Hamby said when the boutique temporarily closed at the end of March 2020, she hit on what she describes as a brilliant idea. She offered her clients a gift card so when they spent $50 on a jewelry purchase, she would give them $100 in merchandise. She said that saved her business while As You Wish was initially closed.

During that time, she was extremely worried about contracting COVID-19. She’s just turned 65, so she can now enroll in Medicare, which she sees as more secure than plans offered through the Affordable Care Act.

“Every little cold or every little cough, I thought ‘I’m going to get COVID,’ ” she said.

She was also worried because of her husband’s February 2020 prostate cancer diagnosis, which had metastasized to his back. She said that although some hospital systems in Florida were overwhelmed because of COVID-19 patients, he never had trouble accessing treatments like radiation.

“But that really added a lot of franticness to the situation,” Hamby said.

Glazer said the As You Wish clientele would come in the shop to buy clothes for an event, such as a dinner, a night at the symphony or a vacation. When the state of Florida allowed stores to reopen in May 2020, clients would drop by, but they weren’t really buying anything because everyone was isolating at home and there were no events to attend.

By mid-May, she had made the decision to close the store.

“I had no confidence that things were going to turn around real quickly,” Glazer said. “It just wasn’t worth it to me to hang on by my fingernails hoping it would change.”

She sent out about 5,000 letters to all of her clients informing them of her decision to close the store before posting news of it to social media. She said she felt emotional about the decision and seeing her clients in the days after.

Glazer posted the news that the store was closing on June 15th on Facebook, saying that keeping it open was unsustainable. She started liquidating the merchandise, which took about two months.

“It was a little sad,” she said. “But once you've made up your mind to do something like this, at least for me, I’m ready to get it done and be done with it.”

Hamby moved her store and studio into her house and started running her business out of her home. She said she was amazed that when she started working from home she became much less distractible and much more productive.

“It was a beautiful thing,” she said.

A year later, Glazer is still absolutely sure it was the right decision. And she doesn’t plan to open another store. Before As You Wish, she owned scrapbooking stores.

“I told my husband I’m cured this time,” she said. “I’m not going to start anything up again.”

About this project

This project is funded by the Knight Foundation as a part of its community grant program, which supports projects which promote economic opportunity through the arts, journalism and entrepreneurship. The project, which is being published in online and print editions of the Democrat over a series of days, is a partnership of Knight, The Village Square, the Community Foundation of North Florida and Skip Foster Consulting. See more stories from the project at www.tallahassee.com/pandemic-economy. This series is available to all online readers, but we hope you’ll subscribe to support local journalism like this at offers.tallahassee.com.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Lessons learned from a Tallahassee business closed by COVID pandemic