We’re Re-Opening the Store!
Hi folks, we hope you are all doing well! We recognize that these past few months have been challenging for everyone, and that for many people, things continue to be difficult. While we may simply be the place you pick up your favourite shave soap, we hope that we can bring a little bit of fun and smooth skin back in to your life 🙂
Since March, we’ve be operating The Copper Hat through our website and we’ve been shipping and delivering orders several times a week. We’d like to give a huge thank you to everyone who placed an order online in the past few months!
New Hours
Mon-Wed: Closed | Thurs: 11am-4pm | Fri-Sun: 11am-5pm
The Store has a New Look!
As you’ve likely experienced, our store space in Market Square is very small. At the best of times, it is tricky to fit multiple people inside. You also know that our business involves a lot of picking things up, trying products on, smelling soap and aftershave – it’s a hands-on experience! Sadly, it’s hands-on no more. So in an effort to keep everyone safe and limit handling of products, we’ve reconfigured the store to be more of a pickup window. Yep, it’s like walk-by shaving supplies… Nope, it’s not why we started this business, but it is what it is!
All of our products are now displayed in the front window. You come up to the counter at the front of the store, let us know what you’d like, and we’ll get it packed up for you. If you think of it like an ice cream parlor it’s less sad and more fun!
This means we’ll have a little less time for skin assessments and answering shaving-related questions in the long-winded and detailed ways you know us best for. The good news, we still have our website and we’re happy to help you through email or over the phone if you need to have a longer chat about your shaving routine.
And about the Website…
We have been pleasantly surprised with how effective moving all of our business online and over the telephone has been. It’s not perfect, but it works really quite well (many folks don’t know this, but we had a web store well before we ever set up at a market booth or had a brick-and-mortar store)!
If you find getting Downtown to be a challenge or would prefer to order your shaving supplies from home, PLEASE DO! We will continue to ship and deliver orders several times a week. How we arrange local deliveries may change slightly as we move forward, but it has been a great success over the past several months.
Alternatively, if you know what you need and would like to do a quick pick up, just place you order online and we’ll let you know when it’s ready to pick up at the store.
One More Thing…
Skip this part if you’re just here for the shaving supplies 😉
We’ve addressed this in some earlier social media posts, but think it’s worth repeating… many small and micro businesses, including us, have been unassisted through the COVID-19 pandemic (we acknowledge that many folks have had it much more difficult than we do and will continue to be challenged moving forward).
As an owner-operated micro business, The Copper Hat is ineligible for the federal wage subsidy. By keeping our website open, we generated enough revenue to disqualify us from the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance Program (CECRA), but lost over 65% of our income. This is not an unusual position to be in – it is happening to small businesses across the city and the country. We closed our doors to keep people safe, lost the majority of our income, and have continued to pay our bills, most notably, our rent on empty store fronts throughout the pandemic. Why mention this? Because it’s true and it’s our story. If you’re reading this and you take an interest, reach out, we’d love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on the situation (not just ours, but the struggle of small businesses everywhere right now).
Thank You!
To everyone who has met us at a market, a craft show, Rock Bay Square, Fan Tan Alley, Market Square or through the website – THANK YOU! Yes, we sell shaving products, but seriously, we are here for the PEOPLE!
Take care,
Brad and Kate