The delay of the resumption of ‘click-and-collect’ shopping until next month at the earliest has temporarily destroyed a lifeline for retailers who had been hoping for some relief after coping with 12 months of pandemic restrictions.
Rónán Dervan works in his family’s shop, Dervan Fashions, in Loughrea, Co Galway. The 85-year-old business sells everything from clothing and footwear to homewares.
He said disappointment “doesn’t really cover” his feelings on the Government’s decision regarding click-and-collect services for non-essential retailers.
“I was sick to the stomach afterwards. I knew what was going to happen in the announcement, I knew there was going to be nothing happening… it was leaked out at that stage,” Mr Dervan told the Irish Independent.
“But we barely got a footnote in it, we were barely mentioned. It was quite insulting to the whole industry, that we’re just put on the long finger like that.”
He says he understands why there needs to be restrictions in place and that there’s an idea that closing retail might lower the movement of people. However, he said retailers weren’t the problem.
“There’s no cases coming from shops. I know the Government has acted to stop the movement of people and I understand that. But the mechanism of being shut down is broken for a long time now.”
Click-and-collect, which the business used last year, “would have been a lifeline” for the shop. “Right through to Christmas, click-and-collect was huge for us. People were still nervous, they still wanted to get in and out of the shop as quickly as possible.”
“Retail has changed hugely in the last year, people aren’t hanging around browsing, they’re in and out getting what they want,” he said.
The sight of people buying items elsewhere that they could have bought in the family shop is “sickening”.
“We are closed down for three seasons, you can’t say clothing isn’t essential over three seasons like that. I’m sure if I walked into the Dáil with no clothes on me I’d be told they were essential,” Mr Dervan said.
The business has availed of Government supports, but Mr Dervan said that the impact of those is limited given the scale of the shock to his business and those of other retailers as a result of the lockdowns.
“You are talking of businesses being 70pc, 80pc, 90pc down on what they would have been in 2018 and 2019. We are just surviving, it is just a case of getting by.”
For those small independent shops in rural Ireland that are able to hold on and survive through the lockdowns, business might actually improve as customers are now more aware of the value of their local stores.
“I see a lot of goodwill from local people that would have traditionally, in more recent years [be] going online, they would have travelled to Dublin and Galway. I think people are more aware of the benefits of small businesses in the towns,” he says.
In Mullingar, Co Westmeath, where Caroline Hynes runs Jasmine Design, the upheaval of the pandemic has prompted her to look at her entire business model.
Her business specialises in matching a person’s outfit with accessories such as earrings, bags and hats.
With large family events such as weddings gone, “we have had to re-think our whole business model and, to be honest, I am still re-thinking it. I was hoping for more clarity [last] week”. The business has a website and over 3,000 followers on Instagram. Looking after the website and social side of things is a “full-time job”, said Ms Hynes.
“I feel that small businesses get a very hard press for not having their websites up to date, but anybody that tries it will understand why... I think people underestimate hugely the amount of work that that requires,” she said.
With click-and-collect gone, she is still getting messages “all the time” from customers.
While people can view products on the website, a lot of customers want to see it in real life before they buy anything.
“They are not used to dealing with me this way, they get fed up of it after a while,” she said.
Ms Hynes said she does not want to do anything that might increase the spread of Covid-19. However, she said people were coming into the town regardless of whether the shops were open or not.
“I don’t want to be a part of bringing people into town, but the reality is that town is full of people because there are so many people with nothing else to do – it is hard to see so many people in other shops.”
The lockdowns had been “extremely challenging” for the retail sector, she said.
“By this stage, I’d say – like every retailer – it’s taken it’s toll on us health-wise and everything, I’m hearing this quite a bit,” she added.
For many retailers, it is hard to understand how passing a bag out of the door of a shop to a customer increases the risk of Covid transmission.
Grace Keane, who runs a clothes shop called Silk Peaches in Ballincollig in Cork city, said: “We would have always been a very busy shop for occasion wear and casual wear.
“This should be my busiest time of year, to be honest. And then obviously overnight the business was turned off like a tap,” she said.
The latest update was “disappointing”, she added. “I thought we would have click-and-collect back.”
“As awful as Covid is and we need to keep everyone safe and healthy and I understand that completely, but I just think it is a bit airy-fairy the way that it’s one rule for one and one rule for another. I can’t see someone at my door… where I just pass them out a bag, contact is minimal anyway.”
She said the click-and-collect service had been “a saviour” when it was allowed and what had been put in its place was frustrating and perplexing for customers who largely come from the surrounding area.
“There are local people that can’t even drop back packages. I have to tell them that they have to queue up at the post office and post stuff back to me,” Ms Keane said.
“I have had a good few phone calls from older people that are either not online or not comfortable using the online system asking to collect [items] and I have had to tell them – no, unfortunately not at the moment.”
