The city of Hamilton has launched a website where residents who want to support local businesses can access them, all in one place.
HometownHub.ca is divided into three sections: food, products, and gift cards, with direct links to the websites of Hamilton’s small businesses.
Norm Schleehahn, the city’s director of economic development, said the site, created in partnership with Hamilton Rising and ShopEatPlay, is also helping to bring merchants online if they’re not already selling their products remotely.
“There is no cost for the merchant to participate,” said Schleehahn.
“If the merchant does not offer gift cards at this time, ShopEatPlay will get them up and running with a digital gift card offering at no cost to the business for three months.”
Schleehahn describes the site as a “parallel economy” for brick-and-mortar businesses that rely on walk-up traffic and don’t have that particular revenue source at this time.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced hundreds of retailers across Hamilton to close their doors or reduce their operational capacity.
For businesses on Locke Street, which were slowly beginning to recover after months of construction closed the street to traffic, it’s been a major blow.
“Locke Street is just devastated,” said Steven McDuffee, who has been running Pure Home Couture Apothecary on Locke alongside his wife Abby since 2002.
The road underwent major reconstruction between March and September of 2019, during which it was closed to vehicle traffic. The street re-opened toward the end of September but was still impacted by construction until November.
During that time, McDuffee estimates that about 15 businesses shut their doors permanently and the ones that remained open lost up to 50 per cent of their business.
“I think there was a perception that we were out of everyone’s routines, and they were kind of staying away from Locke Street, not even thinking of us,” said McDuffee.
“They were starting to come back, a little bit more and more, and then boom, this COVID has … just put the breaks on everything.”
Pure Home was forced to let its staff go and the store is now being run solely in its online form by Steven, Abby and their son.
One of the products that they’ve started selling online is a homemade sanitizer that started when Abby was making some just for use at home.
“Because our daughter has cerebral palsy and she’s severely challenged … we have to be super careful on this, bringing anything home. So she was making some hand sanitizer because we have all of the ingredients. For our perfumes, diffusers, room sprays, and things that we normally make. And then she thought, why don’t I put a label on this and sell it?”
The hand sanitizer has been one of their most popular items since transitioning to the online-only store, but McDuffee said they now have another challenge: the supply chain.
“Things that you need are not readily available. There’s high demand for hand sanitizer ingredients, bottles and things of that nature. Everybody wants it, so it’s hard to get.”
Other suppliers have shut down and aren’t producing the ingredients they need. As a result, McDuffee said they’re only selling what they have in stock.
“It’s hard to make any promises to anybody because you can only work with what’s in your factory. And beyond that, it’s just kind of roll the dice and see what today brings.”
With the launch of the city’s HometownHub site, McDuffee said he hopes it encourages people to support their local businesses while staying at home.
“To go on Amazon and pull products out of the U.S. right now for whatever reason, if they can be replaced by a Canadian-made product or a locally-made product, I would hope that that’s something that people will gravitate to. Because we all need to help each other right now.”
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