NORFOLK, Va. — During the COVID-19 pandemic, I spent time in our community talking with small business owners about their struggle to keep the doors open. Nearly three years later, I was curious to find out how those places have rebounded from 2020. I visited two of the local businesses profiled in my original reports.
The last time I saw D.J. Bee, owner of Freshtopia, we were kept separated by face masks and six feet of social distancing. On the other side of the pandemic, he tells me business is steady.
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"Music heals,” he told me. “So, a lot of people, to get away from things, they use music for therapy. It's great to be a source of it,” he added.
Freshtopia, located on 35th Street near Colonial Avenue, is one of the few dozen Black-owned record stores in the nation. The shelves are all stocked for the busy shopping season.
"(I have) that Mariah Carey record if you're not sick of it,” he suggested to me. “I got Michael Jackson, I got Prince. I got De La Soul. I got Tribe. I got Wu-Tang. I got Fleetwood Mac."
Sure, you can find just about any album online, but stores like D.J. Bee’s offer something you can’t find on the internet: a connection to the communities they serve.
"The best is selling somebody something, somebody that lives here, and they come back and just the conversations, and we talk about music,” Bee explains. “And it means the world to us."
The story is similar just two miles away, in Norfolk’s Neon District, at another Black-owned small business: Shark City Naturals.
"People talk about that all the time, how they come in here, and it feels like family,” owner Danell Skinner tells me.
That makes sense, since you’ll always find at least one member of the Skinner family behind the counter, including their eight children who help with just about every part of the business.
"Established companies, they have the marketing budgets. We don't have all of that, right? So, we have to use what we have," Skinner says.
The kids are the reason their business exists. The Skinners, searching for a solution to their child’s eczema, came up with a line of natural skin and hair care products now sold at their store, all made locally.
"A lot of love goes into each and every product that's created," Skinner’s wife and co-owner Jamie boasted.
I first met the Skinner family the day Shark City Naturals opened on 21st Street in Ghent. The family moved the shop to West Olney Road earlier in 2023.
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"We have our good days when we have traffic coming in. And then sometimes we're just sitting here like, 'Is anybody coming?’” Jamie Skinner recalled.
If there are too many of those quiet days, there's trouble. Especially this time of year. Studies show about a quarter of small businesses in the U.S. get more than half of their annual sales during the holiday season.
"Every time you support us, we actually are here doing a little dance and, thank you, we appreciate you so much,” she added. “We're so grateful and appreciative for every customer that comes through that door."
Every dollar you spend helps to keep the lights on and the heart of another small business beating for another day.
"Music is therapeutic. Music brings everybody together,” D.J. Bee says. "I'm blessed to be able to provide the community with therapy."
News 3 photojournalist Michael Woodward contributed to this report.
