First and foremost, we are incredibly grateful for the continued support everyone has shown us through your online orders, social media posts and kind words. I truly do not know what I would do if you weren’t helping us stay afloat right now, but I imagine it would not be pretty.
Secondly, I just wanted to share my thoughts on the great re-opening. My main thought is that we’re not going to do it in the foreseeable future. I’m very hesitant to put a date on things, but I would say late Summer is the soonest we will let anyone physically enter the Sunbeam Treasure Palace. It may be sooner or later than that depending on the data.
For me, facts are facts. All of the smart people and all of the data suggest that not much has really changed since we all went inside in March. Lots of people are still getting sick and dying and we are still very much in the dark on a lot of things related to Covid-19, like how it spreads, why some people get sicker than others, and when the risk of infecting the people around you will really start to decrease.
So why do some people think it’s okay to open? Because if capitalism were a person, it would be having a panic attack right now and would do anything to stop it. I get it! As someone who has suffered from panic attacks, (more so recently, I should add) I know that when you’re having one, you would do anything to end that chest-crushing, “omg am I dying?!” feeling. It’s VERY unsettling! HOWEVER, I don’t think that anyone would agree that endangering the lives of a bunch of innocent people is a rational solution to a panic attack. AND YET….. here we are. Capitalism is not going away quietly and it’s threatening to take us all down with it, because by definition capitalism prioritizes profit over people. There’s really no arguing that.
So here we are, 9 uncomfortable weeks into this new world and we want things to get back to normal. BUT THEY WON’T! Even if I opened up tomorrow, the experience of coming into the Sunbeam Treasure Palace would not be the same. We want the shop to feel like a hug from your best-smelling friend and I just don’t know how to provide that experience right now. Masks will hide our smiles. Social distancing will mean that we’ll be shouting at each other from across the shop, instead of talking intimately about things like healing, comfort and personal transformation. And don’t even get me started on the sanitation issues posed by bowls of crystals that people pick through and candles that people put their faces in to smell. Not to mention, the stress of enforcing rules on people who don’t want to wear masks or keep socially distant is not something I’m willing to put on myself, and certainly not on my staff.
Finally, the effort that we’ve made pivoting the business to online only has been a huge undertaking and splitting our resources between the brick and mortar and the online shop seems unwise as well. We’re settling in nicely to e-commerce life and while things are so uncertain, it makes sense to keep all of our treasures in one basket.
So this is my plea: help us stay closed. Keep shopping online. We’re working hard to keep the online store updated with all your faves old and new, and we’re hoping to launch a new, more efficient website by mid-summer that will help bring more of the in-store experience online. We will “open” for curbside pickup/window shopping on weekends as soon as we are allowed and it makes sense to do that. We’ll even keep the door propped open so the smells can drift out to the street! (Anyone who’s been to the shop when we have the door open knows you can smell it from down the block…) But you just can’t come in, and no one is sorrier about that than me.
I do see a light at the end of this tunnel! I am confident that with your help, we will get through this and the smells and spells of the Treasure Palace will triumph again soon! It is the honor of my life to support the people I employ and the small businesses I work with. Please help me to keep supporting them while staying safe and soft in the meantime.
The moon is in GEMINI and the Witches say “Take Charge”.
