During the shelter-in-place mandate, Leelanau retailers are innovating to allow customers to window shop from afar.

“We have always had a website, but mostly focused on custom items and Christmas holiday giving,” says Jennifer Collins, owner of Two Fish Gallery in Leland. In recent days she has been working tirelessly to add “a little bit of everything, including gardening and mother’s day items” to her online store. And to stay connected to customers, “we have been doing more video on Instagram and Facebook. We are starting to use Facebook Live and do shop tour videos.”

To help spread goodwill in these difficult days, she is curating and shipping what she is billing “hygge joy boxes.”

“We were thinking of so many people who are either spending a lot of time in their homes, or who are out working in some pretty difficult situations,” she says. “These boxes typically have a cozy pair of socks, something sweet to eat, something that smells wonderful like a candle, something to “play” with, hand sanitizer from Northern Latitudes Distillery in Lake Leelanau — about 10 total surprises.”

Collins says she is hearing from loyal customers who in “normal” years would currently be making plans to be here this spring or summer.

“I think we are all just seeking connections with each other. The best was a note I received in the mail last week from an 83-year-old grandmother in Grand Rapids. We sent her a gift box from her daughter, and she sent me a handwritten note to tell me how much she loved it. I cried.”

Meanwhile, in Suttons Bay, Chelsey Skowronski is celebrating the first spring in her storefront, Poppy Things. “I’ve never given thought to why online shops always say ‘coming soon!’ until my whole business was forced to be online,” she says. 

Her updated online shop went live mid-April. “I am blown away by the amount of support near and far that continues to keep me and this business of mine going. Shipping is taking a tad longer than usual due to higher order volumes, and items being made to order. This is a very good problem to have,” she says.

Also in Suttons Bay, Linda Garshaw’s The Happy Woman store turned 20 on April 19, a day she had hoped to be celebrating in person with her customers.

 “As things started getting scarier with coronavirus news, I felt so helpless. I thought, well, I’m really good at sending out gifts,” she says.

As a result, Garshaw has started weekly gift giveaways on Facebook and Instagram. “I put together five to 10 packages to send out with some of the uplifting things we have in stock and ask, ‘If you know someone could use this, message me, I’ll send it on your behalf.’ It made me feel useful in a very small way and opened me up to so many stories from people, who in addition to this virus, are going through all the tough stuff that happens normally in life.”

Garshaw also added e-commerce to her existing website, after discontinuing her online presence a few years ago. “I found it was not my store customers shopping, and I was maintaining two separate inventories and two different business models."

This time around, she says, the shoppers are her store customers. “It is my regulars from both here and downstate, who have cottages or come up every year.”

She credits recent boosts to online business to fellow Leelanau retailers and locals who spread the word with social media posts and reshares. “For instance, Lisa Baird has the Instagram account @capturingmichigan, and she has been putting Suttons Bay businesses in her Instagram posts and in her stories every day.”

She adds, “Right now is an exercise in living in uncertainty and doing the best you can. I’m not going to lie; some days aren’t great. But I’m resolved to make plans based on hope and to think of little ways to help out in the community. The little things we do add up. It’s like a quilt being made of all these little pieces.”