Jun.02 -- Karyn Schwartz owns SugarPill, a shop in Seattle that sells herbal teas, tinctures, and natural body care products. But, mostly, it’s a way for Schwartz to help people. That in-person experience helped her store and thrive at a time when many brick-and-mortar shops were struggling. With no online store, she's been taking orders over the phone and personally delivering them to customers.
My name is Karen Schwartz and I own a small herbal apothecary in Seattle Washington called sugar pill. I open sugar pill almost ten years ago after working in this community for over 30 years we function as an intermediary between the health care system and not having health care.
So people come in here for a variety of reasons they might come in because they can't sleep because they have a sinus infection because they have whatever and they're just wondering what can I do safely on my own to take care of myself the current status of the business is that we've been closed.
I actually closed before the mandate to shut down specifically because people come here when they're sick. And I started talking to my customers about it. I started talking my landlord about it and nobody was taking it seriously here yet.
So I decided that since my job is to teach people how to care for themselves that I had to set an example. So I shut my store down
And probably about a week or so later other stores started shutting down and the city started going into lockdown.
We've been able to do some limited business in the last few weeks by having people place orders either online or on the phone and we're doing very local delivery where I literally drive to your house and drop things off on your porch.
The hardest thing that I've had to do is jump through all the hoops to try to get the assistance I've applied for every grant every loan every program every everything I've applied for everything I've tried to apply for unemployment. I've tried to help my employees apply for unemployment and
I'm a smart girl. I mean
I own a business I run a business like I'm pretty savvy and I have had the hardest time just jumping through the hoops of what is required to ask for the help that we should be getting to do what we've been asked to do.
And the assistance for the most part is not really assistance to apply for a loan that you'll never be able to pay back just to pay your rent on a space you can't open.
Does it make any sense and it doesn't make any sense to ask people to not work and then not just give them a check to pay their bills it makes no sense. What worries me about my business. I mean obviously is whether or not we'll survive but if we do survive what worries me is
That my neighborhood won't survive. Communities offer a safety net. I think one thing that people have probably realized is how important it is to our own personal mental health to just walk around in the world and see people casually and wave to the stranger whose face you recognize because you see them every day. So I may or may not make it a sugar pill but that's not what's most important. What's most important is that our communities stay intact and if we don't help each other do that.
I'm really afraid for what will happen in a much larger way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liNpOECRVZA