“I think with the pandemic, people wanted to get maybe out of big cities and go somewhere a little bit different and do Christmas shopping,” Cyndi Ziegler, who owns a store in North Carolina, told NBCNews. “I’ve met people from all over.”
The couple could only afford to hire two other part-time staff members due to limited finances at the time.
The small businesses that are still standing alongside the Zieglers this holiday season have seen renewed strength since last year, when there were greater Covid-19 restrictions and the vaccine was not yet widely available. Harper’s Books in Lebanon, Tennessee, has been hit by supply chain woes, according to its owner James Kamer.Even after starting holiday preparations in June, inventory is still not where it should be, either. Clark said order delays have ranged from six weeks to six months to never arriving at all.
“This past month has been really difficult. Shipping is really starting to slow down,” he said. “A lot of the titles that we order are not in stock. We can’t get them. Publishers are saying that they’re not going to be printed until after the first of the year.”