Progress 2021: Valley businesses weathered the pandemic through grit and creativity

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, local businesses were forced to temporarily close their doors thanks to state mandates and public health concerns. As a result Valley residents stayed home and hunkered down -- and did most of their shopping online due to lack of other options.

The business implications of the weeks of brick-and-mortar business closures, ongoing social distancing and debates over masks and in-person shopping are still being realized, local business officials said -- and likely won’t be fully understood for a long time. The Palmer and Wasilla Chambers of Commerce, which represent member businesses in their locals areas, and the Alaska Chamber of Commerce, which represents businesses state-wide, do not have data on specifically how online sales impacted local companies, officials with those organizations said.

What is now known, they said, is the importance of using the pandemic as an opportunity to reassess, pivot and creative. Even as local shoppers turned to home delivery and curbside grocery pick-up, Valley business leaders worked to shift their services to weather the explosion of online shopping from out-of-state stores, officials with local Chambers of Commerce said.

Few businesses affiliated with those chambers have thus far folded as a result of the pandemic, representatives with all three organizations said. And that has a lot to do with collective efforts to pivot to online sales where possible while also rolling-out a series of “shop local” campaigns.

“If you want to keep Palmer Palmer, you’ve got to spend your money locally,” said Ailis Vann, head of the Palmer Camber of Commerce. “People love our town and they love that they can park in one spot and walk, and eat and shop all day if they wanted to. If you like that and you want that to stay the same then you need to come and do that right now.”

To encourage that local shopping the Palmer chamber re-energized their holiday Shop Palmer stamp card program through which shoppers can fill-out cards by spending money in local shops, with each stamp representing $10. When turned in to collection boxes throughout the city, cards were entered in a raffle for a chance to win money that could be spent in Palmer.

Those submitted cards represented $581,000 in money spent at 36 Palmer businesses, she said.

That shopping raffle incentive program isn’t new -- it has been going since 2018, Vann said. But unlike in years past when they gave away Visa gift cards, the Chamber in 2020 introduced as prize money the Palmer Bingle, a wooden token valued at $5, $10 or $20, and accepted in lieu of cash at participating businesses throughout the city. The Chamber gave away $6,500 in Bingles over the holiday season, Vann said.

And Bingles didn’t just help keep the spending going in Palmer through the raffles. They could also be purchased from the Chamber as a way to support local businesses. The Chamber sold $15,000 worth, she said.

In Wasilla as in Palmer, many businesses may have dodged folding thanks to lax Borough pandemic closure rules. After the initial state-mandated shutdowns in the spring, Borough businesses were by and large permitted to once again open as they saw fit, a fact that has kept them afloat even as many shoppers turned to established online retailers for their needs.

“Wasilla is pretty resilient - we're still here, we’re still open, we’re still doing the best we can,” said Jessica Viera, head of the Wasilla Chamber. “Here in Wasilla we haven't seen [many closures] because Wasilla hasn’t been locked down, we haven't seen that sort of fall-out on our businesses. They’re not where they expected to be financially, they’re not getting the returns they expected, they’re not getting the business they expected in 2020.”

One challenge has been working with local businesses to build an online retail presence, Viera said. While gig-economy delivery services like DoorDash have helped Wasilla restaurants stay open even when diners were staying home, other types of stores have had a hard time building a web-based presence, she said. That’s because they lack the existing infrastructure and know-how to rapidly build a web store -- and don’t have the money to hire someone.

At the Alaska Chamber, which represents 500 businesses state wide, president and CEO Kati Capozzi, said she’s also seen businesses try to rapidly produce online options to support their bottom lines during the closures. Those that did so successfully, she said, are still here.

“There’s no question that the small businesses who did make an attempt to shift to online sales, whether its food or retail, they succeeded and survived better than the people who didn't make that shift,” Capozzi said.

Looking forward, she said, businesses need to combat shoppers’ ability to buy online by encouraging trust among their customers.

“The consumer confidence is not anywhere close to what it was before COVID,” she said. “It continues to be a concern, and I think it will continue to be a concern into 2021.”