Some local non-essential businesses yet to reopen are facing a long wait before they can once again welcome their customers back through the doors.
Owner of Braddon blow dry bar, Saloon, Sarah Wright doesn’t anticipate restarting her business’s hair and beauty services any time soon.
The salon is currently open with two staff for two hours a day two days a week in a retail capacity for click-and-collect only.
“I feel like we’re going to be last because we’re probably the least ‘essential’,” she told Canberra Daily.
And for Ms Wright, that suits her fine, given many clients have pushed their bookings for weddings and other events back to April 2022.
She is keen to reopen later in the summer once the vaccination targets have been met so her business can operate under minimal restrictions.
“If you rush to open up with all these annoying rules it ruins the vibe.
“Blow drying someone’s hair with a mask on, trying to talk to them through a mirror is just really difficult,” she smiled. “You don’t realise how much you lip read.”
While they’ll most likely reopen at a time when events are still few and far between, Ms Wright expects they’ll be busy from the first day.
“Canberra people love supporting local,” she said. “Last time we reopened a lot of things were cancelled, but they made their event coming to get their hair done and have a glass of wine in the salon.”
Comparing this lockdown to the initial wave of restrictions from March 2020, Ms Wright praised the original JobKeeper wage supplement that kept her employees attached to the business.
“I had a team of eight people coming in to work, all allowed in there,” she said. “It kept us all together. The support this time has made it more personal and less about the workplace.”
Lockdown ‘a toll’ on creativity in business
When owner of KX Pilates Braddon, Shane Brady, heard the lockdown was called on 12 August, the studio held its last classes that afternoon before shutting the doors.
Now a month later, they’re still in limbo.
In the 2020 lockdown, Ms Brady made the decision early to rent out her equipment to clients given she knew it would be some time before classes restarted.
This time around, she would like to rent out her equipment once again but has been denied access to her studio by ACT Health officials to conduct routine maintenance on the equipment.
“I’m hamstrung from two different aspects; to get the equipment in for maintenance, then getting into the property … I didn’t have that last time,” she said. “It’s definitely a toll on what you can do to be creative.”
Having had her application to access her business premises to perform essential maintenance work on her reformers that she herself assembled; the advice given was to hire a maintenance worker.
“I was thinking surely there’s got to be a way, but it appears as if there’s no way to get in,” she said.
“I put them together, I know how to do it.”
“The word I’ve been given is exactly that a maintenance person would have more a chance than me … It costs more money when I could have done it all myself.”
That application requires documentation including a COVID safety plan, a delivery docket, and letter from Ms Brady herself.
“It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “When I found out I was speechless, I felt really depressed and a bit hopeless.”
Like Saloon, Ms Brady expects her Pilates studio to be one of the last business categories to reopen.
“That’s the most challenging aspect of these kinds of lockdowns, you just can’t plan around it because we don’t know how long it’s going to be,” she told Canberra Daily.
Ms Brady is calling for the ACT Government to develop a structured strategy on coming back to work so businesses like hers and their staff have some loose dates they can plan around.
“A structured back to business plan would be really what’s needed,” she said.
“My staff are mostly casual, so it’s a very challenging space when people start to feel threatened by the fact they don’t have the capacity to earn their income anymore.”
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