Small shop losing out on business due to snowfall

The owners of a sporting good store in Madison said they should have seen a steady stream of shoppers over the weekend, but weather warnings in Lake and Ashtabula counties kept them from opening their doors and kept excited shoppers at home.

New mom Aydreana Morgan waanted to take her baby, Gianni, to her first experience with holiday shopping.

“You’re basically quarantined in the house. You can’t go anywhere,” Morgan said.

Instead, Morgan and baby were cooped up at home due to 40 inches of snow blanketing parts of Painesville. She said Gianni’s dad was trying to clear the driveway for a food run, but even that’s proved to be a challenge.

Gianni’s dad, Daveon Bucher, was shoveling snow from underneath his car tires trying to get his stuck car out of the driveway.

One local business owner was back open Monday after having to close all weekend, during what should have been a holiday rush.

“Today is not gonna help us much. Schools are closed, and I don’t see us picking up until the middle to end of the week,” said Steve Reichert, owner of family-owned Sports N Sports in Madison.

In addition to sporting goods, they make letterman jackets. Many parents order them as gifts for the holidays.

“A lot of labor, and we have four seamstresses. This time of year, we’ll be working to catch up all the way to the end of February for these,” Reichert said of the jackets that require a lot of attention to detail.

Now he’s playing catch up.

“We can’t get the production people in here. It has hurt us. I worry about that a lot because every day that we’re not here means four or five jackets don’t get done in time for Christmas. We’ll be working six days in December for sure,” Reichert said.

He sent his employees home early Friday so they could get home safely and remained closed throughout the weekend. 

While being closed all weekend isn’t ideal he said not all is lost.

“But we can overcome this. We still got all of December to go,” Reichert said.