'What the hell's going on downtown?' Pittsfield's North Street retailers want answers. Mayor Tyer says, 'It's a work in progress' berkshireeagle.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from berkshireeagle.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
PITTSFIELD â Independent bookstores often struggle to find a foothold these days, but a Berkshire County couple believe they have found a formula that will work in their new venture, which recently opened on upper North Street.
Stephen Rudy and Susana Gilboe own Familiar Trees, a bookstore/gallery space at 411 North St. that offers equal parts literature and artwork.
Familiar Trees offers books that specialize in art-related topics like art design, graphic design and photography, along with a curated literature and poetry section. It also sells various types of art objects, like paintings and sculptures, and puts on shows for local artists.
PITTSFIELD â The wreath went into a box. The box went into the mail. And then, it seems, into limbo.
Township Four Floristry & Home, a downtown Pittsfield gift store, paid about $25 to select âPriorityâ shipping for the wreath it sent Nov. 27 to a customer in Rhode Island. On Saturday, 15 days later, co-owner Jed Thompson checked the U.S. Postal Serviceâs tracking system and found that the box containing that token of holiday warmth was cooling its heels somewhere in southern Connecticut, one of many packages caught in a coronavirus pandemic-driven delivery snarl affecting the whole U.S.
On the U.S. Postal Service website, a message now reads: âALERT: USPS IS EXPERIENCING UNPRECEDENTED PACKAGE INCREASES AND LIMITED EMPLOYEE AVAILABILITY DUE TO THE IMPACTS OF COVID-19.â
PITTSFIELD â The wreath went into a box. The box went into the mail. And then, it seems, into limbo.
Township Four Floristry & Home, a downtown Pittsfield gift store, paid about $25 to select âPriorityâ shipping for the wreath it sent Nov. 27 to a customer in Rhode Island. On Saturday, 15 days later, co-owner Jed Thompson checked the U.S. Postal Serviceâs tracking system and found that the box containing that token of holiday warmth was cooling its heels somewhere in southern Connecticut, one of many packages caught in a coronavirus pandemic-driven delivery snarl affecting the whole U.S.
On the U.S. Postal Service website, a message now reads: âALERT: USPS IS EXPERIENCING UNPRECEDENTED PACKAGE INCREASES AND LIMITED EMPLOYEE AVAILABILITY DUE TO THE IMPACTS OF COVID-19.â
PITTSFIELD â For small retailers, the holiday shopping season usually is the most wonderful time of the year.
It brings in more revenue from Thanksgiving and Christmas than the rest of the calendar year, with holiday sales, on average, representing 20 percent of annual sales for most industries, and even 30 percent or higher for some others, according to the National Retail Federation. Tis the season, indeed. But, this year, the holiday season is even more important to small retailers in the Berkshires than it normally is. It s hard to be jolly when the COVID-19 pandemic has turned everything upside down.
Many small retailers in the Berkshires were forced to shut for several weeks this spring when the COVID-19 pandemic began to affect the local economy. So, they are putting more emphasis on the holiday season this year as they try to end the year with a traditional bang and make up for the revenue that they didn t expect to lose.