As a shop that is focused on supporting Alberta artists, Project A had to be quick on their feet and make changes to the way locals and visitors could shop. Having pondered on implementing an eCommerce store for some time, the pandemic was the push they needed to take the shops wares into the digital space.
What is the name of your business?
My name is Jade and my shop is called Project A.
When did you start your business in Canmore? Tell us more about your beginnings. I’m originally from Canmore and I started my business in 2017. We started as a pop-up store in another location, but it went so well that we decided to move permanently to this location. We work with over 85 emerging artists all working within fine-craft and all of them are within the first 5 years of starting their businesses. We try to promote the new guys while supporting the local economy through local artists.
Would you say you serve more locals or visitors? Most of our clients come from surrounding areas like Calgary and Edmonton, but we do work with a lot of locals and help them find gifts as well.
Tell us about your business pre-COVID-19. We’re still a fairly new business so we were doing really well, but as a new business, you’re not always making the maximum amount of money that you have the potential to be making. However, pre-COVID our business was definitely in a growth phase and we were doing really. We had exceeded where we thought we would be at that point.
Tell us about the impact COVID-19 has had on your business.
When COVID hit we immediately started planning for an online launch. It was really easy at that time because I had all the spare time in the world to do it. It ended up working out really well because it was a task I had been putting off for the last three years. Now you can shop a collection of what we have online and we’re still updating it every day. Otherwise, we’ve just been continually trying to get more products together for our re-launch. Now that we’re back open we have lots of new artists and products for everyone to see.
How has your business innovated or pivoted during this time?
When we reopened there were a lot of guidelines put in place for a lot of different sectors. Retail unfortunately didn’t have that many guidelines. What the province has put out for us has been quite vague. However, what we found works really well for us and our clients is to be clear and concise. Right when someone walks in the door we let them know what our expectations are. Hand sanitizer is mandatory and we encourage less touching, which has definitely changed the way people shop in our store
What marketing methods (if any) did you use to promote your business during COVID?
Project A heavily relies on Instagram and Facebook for marketing. We don’t normally pay for ads, but we do have a huge following on Instagram. We ended up doing a really cool fundraiser with a lot of our pottery artists and we sold a collection of mugs with 20% going to food security programs in town. We tried to use the community as our advertising means by creating a sense of community among our clients. Lastly, we have just been trying to up our social media game and posting better photos than we were before
Do you have any tips that you can share that could help other businesses with the focus of keeping their staff and customers safe while delivering their products or services?
The advice that I would give other businesses in my situation would be to make sure that your team feels comfortable and safe, and that your customers feel the same.
How can the Canmore community support you and your business as we move out of this unprecedented time?
Our business, as I’ve said, works with emerging artist from across the country so we really are supporting over 100 different businesses when you shop here. The ways that you can support us is definitely by picking up a little gift for yourself, but if you don’t have the means to purchase right now then any social media support is appreciated for our artists and for Project A. Even just a simple like or a nice comment is an awesome way to support local businesses at this time.
Visit Project A Shop in Downtown Canmore. Please always remember to follow Alberta Health Services guidelines during this time.
Read our other blogs from Downtown Canmore businesses who speak about their experience with the pandemic:
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