Editor’s note: This is part of a series exploring how Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs and small businesses have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic and their plans for moving forward.
Maker: Anne Harrill
Business: Océanne, a locally-designed and handmade jewelry boutique
How have business operations changed at Oc éanne since being faced with the pandemic?
After closing the store, we also closed the studio a few days later. Most of our shows were canceled, and shows are a big part of our business. We travel quite a lot for fairs and festivals. We also have a small team, and half of the team had to be furloughed. The most challenging part of this is trying to figure out what to do with the team; we’re definitely really, really close. We all work in a small space 40 hours a week. So it’s definitely concerning to not know how to be able to provide for the future.
Anne works in her studio in Gordon Square. [Océanne]
What drives you to keep moving forward?
There’s definitely some good days and bad days. There’s days when it’s super overwhelming, especially when you just don’t know what to do. Some days it feels hopeless, like you’re just stuck, and other days you realize that people have been supportive, and you can kind of take it slow. It just weighs on us, and I try to be strong for my family.
Anne with her husband and two children. [Océanne]
What do you think about now when you consider the future of your business?
Will people shop the way they used to? We don’t know that. People have been really supportive of small businesses, and I think that when everything shut down, they realized that ‘Wow, there’s a lot of things that people lost.’ So I really hope that when things get back to, and I don’t want to say ‘normal’ because I don’t know that we’ll ever be back to normal, but that when things reopen slowly, I want to say that people will be supportive and aware, and will keep shopping small.
