Businesses on Provo Center Street are attempting to bring in more in-person customers instead of online by working closely with Downtown Provo Incorporated, a group that promotes businesses in the Downtown Provo Historic District.
“We closed early on Black Friday,” Ken Taylor, the owner of B&H Pharmacy on Provo’s Center Street, said. “There were no cars on this block or on the other side of the street from the corner all the way down to Taylor Maid. I could not see a car on the other side or either side of the center median. There was nobody walking the streets.”
The extended sales beyond Black Friday itself aren’t the only reason there were fewer shoppers after Thanksgiving, he added.
“I've been down here 10 years and I’ve seen a big shift,” Taylor said. “COVID changed people's habits tremendously and now they've gotten used to, ‘Well, I'll just go buy it online.’”
To bring in more customers, Taylor said he has changed his business plan, converting half of his store to help sell products made by local independent artists and entrepreneurs.
Additionally, Taylor put some products he has had for more than two years on sale in hopes to sell them, he said.
Other businesses on Center Street have also changed aspects of their business plan to attract more customers.
“A big thing we are doing is ensuring that we have the best inventory available for holiday shoppers," Ben Maughan, the general manager of Pioneer Book, said. "We are also trying to make our sales floor as festive as we can to promote positivity and provide a comfortable environment for shopping.”
Increased foot traffic helps shops such as B&H Pharmacy and Pioneer Book, but some businesses have also changed what hours they are open around the holidays.
“Usually so for us, between Christmas and New Year's, (traffic) just dies, we're dead," Phil Stevenson, owner of K’s Japanese Kitchen, said. "So, this year we're going to be closed from the 24th through the first. It's not even worth being open.”
Miriam Housley, owner of Foxglove Flowers, said one group that has helped promote her store and many others on Center Street is Downtown Provo Incorporated.
“We do a lot of events and activities,” Quinn Peterson, the executive director of Downtown Provo Incorporated, said. “Things like the Christmas window competition, which is something that we put together to draw people downtown because it's more festive.”
Peterson spends much of his time with Provo City staff working on policy that will better assist local businesses, he said.
“What we're doing is we're hearing of issues for the business community,” Peterson said. “And then we are taking proposals to the city, and then we're collaborating with the city to come up with those answers and solutions.”
In addition to listening to the input from business owners, Provo City also helps provide financial support for Downtown Provo Incorporated.
“I fundraise from the business community,” Peterson said. “Businesses pay membership, just like a chamber of commerce or any other non-business plans, but then the city matches the money that I raise each quarter to a cap."
Local small businesses may be more worried than in years past, Peterson said, but that anxiety isn’t specific to Provo or to the holiday season.
“It's just the fact that our economy has been worse as a nation,” Peterson said. “And the small businesses often feel that pain more than large corporations, because small businesses don't have the same giant corporate umbrellas to save them.”