Regina store weighing the options of possible opening

While some businesses in the province are champing at the bit with the possibility of getting theirs doors open again, Cecilia Kautzman is taking a more measured approach.

Kautzman owns Kids Trading Company, a children’s clothing store on Rae Street.

This week, the provincial government is expected to release its plan on how the economy will be reopened. It will include a description of which businesses will be able to open, when, and with what restrictions. It’s unclear when the plan will be put into action.

For the moment, while all the restrictions are still in place, Kids Trading Company is doing business with online orders and curbside pickup.

Kautzman said that doesn’t bring in enough for the store to continue that way indefinitely, but it helps with the bills she still has to pay through the pandemic.

“We’ve had to really adjust and adapt. It’s a totally different way of doing business for a normal brick-and-mortar store who usually don’t do a lot of online sales. We’ve had to switch pretty much completely to doing online sales,” said Kautzman.

However, if the store were allowed to open back up to customers next week, Kautzman doesn’t know if she’d fling open the doors.

“I’m going to assume that even if a smaller business were able to reopen, we’re probably not going to see the kind of traffic we were used to prior to the shutdown,” she said. “So we would have to probably evaluate as we go forward to see what the cost would be to remaining open, as opposed to doing what we’re doing right now.”

Kautzman said she thinks the store would be able to handle any safety requirements, such as fewer people in the store at a time and increased cleaning. She said she probably wouldn’t have to hire any more staff for it, but said it would take up a lot more of her current staff’s time.

She said she would also try to continue the online orders, to be able to cater to people who still won’t want to go out as much.

“I do think (opening things back up is) something that, obviously, everyone wants to work towards,” she said. “I do believe that we all want to do it in a safe manner. We obviously want the best for ourselves and our staff and our customers. We want everybody to be safe … It’s going to be a challenge just trying to figure out how to do it in a responsible way.”