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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (March 15, 2022)
COAST RIVER BUSINESS JOURNAL BUSINESS NEWS MARCH 2022 • 9 Continued from Page 8 in the front yard, eyes glowing with a cigar between its teeth. Lee said a customer was driv- ing from Astoria that day to pick it up. A surprising positive element of the pandemic, Lee said, was time. He9s been able to condense ove years of home improvement projects into one, and the couple has been making more art. Lee said he felt lucky to have bought the property before hous- ing prices rose and that they didn9t have to deal with any sub- stantial overhead costs when the pandemic hit. <It sucks, life9s diferent,= Yvonne Lee said. <But we9re pretty optimistic and easygoing. We roll with the punches.= <If we had overhead, I can9t even imagine,= Danny Lee added. ‘We’re still struggling, but we’ll get through it’ Matt and Meghan Ruona are the owners of Four Paws on the Beach with locations in Cannon Beach and Manzanita. Two years ago, when the pan- demic hit, Ronda Jean Vivle- more was deciding whether to buy A Whisper in Time Photog- raphy from its previous owners in Seaside. <I was like, do I really want to sign this paperwork? Because I was oguring that something seri- ous was going to happen with the whole pandemic. And I decided to go along with it,= she said. After a few closures toward the beginning, business is going steadier now. Customers, often from out of town, oll up the weekend9s appointment sched- ule to don corsets, cowboy and pirate hats and sailor outots for old-fashioned souvenir photos. She said she9s happy she signed the papers. <I mean, we9re still strug- gling, but we9ll get through it,= she said. Vivlemore said she expects things to pick up this summer during the peak tourism season. <I think things are coming around and people are starting to get back to work and going out and about,= she said. <I think the people who are still in business are going to turn around, and will stay for another year.= A surge of customers Meghan and Matt Ruona, owners of Four Paws on the Beach in Manzanita, opened a second location in Cannon Beach in January 2020. Though pet stores were con- sidered essential businesses, they opted to close the new location for several weeks at the start of the pandemic and focus on their Manzanita location, which they bought from its previous owners in 2015. When they reopened, Matt Ruona said it felt like <summer on steroids= for a month and a half, with an unprecedented amount of customers coming in. <It9s really felt like people had kind of rediscovered the Oregon Coast as a destination when there was no nying to Europe or going to the East Coast,= he said. <It kind of felt like everyone from Idaho to California went, 8Well, where can we get in the car and go to that9s fun and exciting?9= The pandemic also brought a new, common occurrence: four- month-old puppies. <Almost every day, if not sev- eral times a week. You have folks coming in with a four-month-old puppy. Having a four-month- old puppy is just the refrain that I hear over and over again,= he said. <COVID adoptions went up,= Meghan Ruona said. He said that during the surge in visitors last summer people seemed happy to go shopping while on vacation, even buying coats for each one of their dogs. Matt Ruona said he hopes that festivals like the animal res- cue fundraiser <Muttzanita= can return. He noted how popular Cannon Beach9s annual Corgi Beach Day has been for pet owners. The couple said that com- munity support has made a sig- niocant impact on their business during the pandemic. Matt Ruona said many customers went out of their way to shop locally. <We didn9t know what to expect. We were new to retail and owning our own business, and so to see that outpouring of support has been tremendous and just so heartwarming. We are just so grateful,= he said.