Spend $50, get a tree. That’s the gift you’ll get when shopping this holiday season at Scout And Pine, an outdoors-themed boutique in downtown Bend. It’s not quite the normal deal one finds in Black Friday ads, but this year, anything goes.
Owner Chris Foote encourages customers to plant the trees and help Oregon make up for some of the million acres of forest burned by the September wildfires.
“We are giving them away through the holiday season,” said Foote. “We are just trying to get people to save the world by planting trees.”
Pandemic closures have brought challenges in 2020, and businesses large and small have been forced to get creative with their marketing campaigns. Ending the year with a profit is in the cards for companies that benefited from the pandemic — hardware stores, game makers, grocery stores and others — but small businesses across the country have either closed for good or are struggling just to make ends meet.
Scout And Pine is still a new business, having only been open since September. The autumn season was surprisingly good for the shop, said Foote, thanks to the influx of tourists Bend received at the tail-end of September. In the initial weeks after opening, most of the customers hailed from California, Seattle and Portland, he said.
Business has not been rosy all year long, said Foote. His wife, Gwen Whitten, runs two other shops in town, and the revenue for both of those have slipped in this pandemic year.
“Two stores are down about 12% year-to-date, but with the new store doing well we should be able to finish off the year at a revenue that is similar to a year ago,” said Foote.
Nationwide, holiday shopping sales are showing an upward trend, even in a year that has challenged so many Americans financially. The number of online Black Friday shoppers passed the 100 million mark for the first time, an 8% increase compared to a year ago, according to the National Retail Federation.
The federation said it expects holiday merchandise sales to increase as Americans are spending less on personal services, travel and entertainment. Holiday sales during November and December are expected to rise between 3.6% to 5.2% year-over-year, the federation reports.
That’s good news for local retailers such as the Confluence Fly Shop, a fly fishing equipment store in Bend’s Old Mill District. The whipsaw restrictions have made 2020 a roller-coaster year for the shop, now in its seventh year in business. Sales are down for the year, but the company’s fly-fishing guide department, Deep Canyon Outfitters, had a good summer and was able to offset some of the losses.
“Because of COVID and people wanting to get outside, there has been a lot of business for our guiding department,” said sales employee and fly-fishing guide Ander Korman. “In the shop, it hasn’t been as good as we normally do, but we are hanging in there.”
Like Scout And Tree, Confluence is also offering its own unique spin on the end-of-the-year holiday deals.
The fly-fishing shop partnered with Thump Coffee and Seahorse Chocolate, also local businesses, to create gift boxes that include branded coffee mugs, chocolate and packages of whole bean coffee. Five percent of the sales of each gift box go to an Oregon wildfire relief charity.
All three shops were impacted by the COVID restrictions this year, said Confluence owner Tye Krueger, and the trio are making a collaborative effort to improve their bottom line. Fish artwork featured on the coffee mugs and packaging was produced by Krueger, an accomplished illustrator.
“This is a nice collaboration with these other two companies to offer some Christmas spirit with items that everyone can enjoy — coffee, chocolate,” said Krueger. “Partner that with fly fishing, the three married together nicely.”
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