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Jera Jarvis, owner of Jarvis Treasures in Fort Pierce, sells size inclusive apparel,
from size 0 to size 26.
der, pay online and then pick up the merchandize outside the store.
“It was a savior,” said O’Connell, a John Carroll High School
graduate whose friends knew her as Patty Glascock.
Gumbo Limbo sales were way less than half of what they were
in March-April 2019, but it was enough to keep the business
afloat, O’Connell said.
The shift to online sales experienced at Gumbo Limbo was
duplicated at small retailers, and big ones, to varying degrees of
success across Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River counties.
How stores dealt with the massive shift in behavior by their
customers determined how they fared during the shutdowns
for the pandemic, agreed several city and county officials on the
Treasure Coast.
The pandemic has caused “probably the most changes in habits
since World War Two,” said Phil Matson, community development
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director for Indian River County.
Those changes include how consumers shop, from home on a
phone or computer to when they visit a store.
The shutdowns hit Treasure Coast retail shops during the tail
end of the selling season when winter residents inflate the area’s
population.
“That pretty much killed the season,” O’Connell said. “It took
away Easter, which is a great holiday for us, and it took away
Mother’s Day, which is our second-biggest selling time. We
learned about it six days before the mandatory shutdowns. It
was a real punch in the gut.”
Moving sales online has been perhaps the biggest adaptation
by retailers, who were guided by local and national advocacy
groups including the National Retail Federation. For stores that
remained open throughout the shutdowns and for those that reopened
in May, advice ranged from selling and marketing online,
having customers pick up purchases, shipping and delivering
purchases, no-contact credit card transactions, as well as realigning
store layouts to increase physical distancing. And sanitizing.
Sanitizing like your shop’s life depends on it.
Jera Jarvis, owner of Jarvis Treasures in the Arcade Building in
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