In addition to the tragic direct impacts of coronavirus on families and individuals, one of the additional immediate and widespread repercussions of the virus on our country and world has been the effects on neighbors and friends that work at and own small, local businesses.  

“As a small business ourselves, we could feel it internally at Recover right away as orders were abruptly put on hold,” described Recover’s president Bill Johnston this week. “All sorts of events, festivals, retail, tap rooms,  - you name it - were obviously shut down, and while social distancing and these measures are crucial at this time, it doesn’t mean that our partners and friends in small businesses everywhere aren’t really feeling it - we know that small businesses depend on and project that revenue, so when you get shut down, it's brutal and you’re left with very few options to make ends meet, pay your employees and your rent, and carry on in a way that allows you to re-open your doors.”

After connecting with Recover’s many small business partners, the Recover team decided to take immediate action and set up a Support Local Recover Tee fundraiser to put together some small amount of funding to send the way of our heavily impacted small business partners in order to help contribute to paying their basic costs during these challenging times, and ultimately contribute in some way to them being able to reopen their doors when the time comes. For every Support Local tee sold, $10 is added to the Recover Support Local Fund and distributed directly to our small business partners.  This fund provides some immediate operating relief to keep our small business community on its feet right now, and supports them to continue to serve our communities in their own unique ways in the future.

Further, the majority of our products are made in the USA (from materials to cut and sew, Recover tees are literally made within 250 miles of our headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina), so we are doing our best to work with both our customer partners and manufacturing partners to innovate and keep jobs going- we also recognize that the hourly worker out there is feeling immense and immediate economic impact in these circumstances as well.  

In response, we created a new way for partners to create immediate operating capital through merch sales, as well as to give our manufacturing partners as much work as we can during this time. Check out the Support Local Collection and contact us if you are interested in the online fundraising and dropshipping program we developed to best support businesses and organizations in these circumstances. This new platform allows individuals in a Recover partner’s audience to make direct purchases through Recover Tee sales that support the organization through the partner’s established 2 week campaign. The platform doesn’t require the partner to pre-order any set amount, rather, shirts are printed and sent directly from Recover to the individuals who ordered them when the campaign ends. 

It’s also empowering to know, there are many things all of us as individuals can do during this time to support local, small businesses. Here are a few:

• When ordering online, look for local and small business options and order directly from their website, verses from large scale marketplaces along the lines of Amazon.
• If shopping at larger chain stores, look for locally produced products and purchase those.
• While many are not, if you are in a circumstance that allows you to incorporate take-out from local restaurants into your home menu, do so. Definitely request that single use to-go packaging items be limited (ask for no plastic silverware, small containers of things like soy sauce, ketchup, etc. if you have them at home). Check out Recover’s Drinkware and Utensils for great take-out, get out fresh air picnic items.

Now, more than ever, simply supporting our local communities any way we can seems to be more relevant every day. Join us in Supporting Local.