IOWA CITY, Iowa (KCRG) - Summer events throughout eastern Iowa have been canceled or moved online because of the pandemic.
Iowa City was able to keep one of its annual traditions still going this year: the Sidewalk Sales.
“In some ways, I think this is the perfect event for this type of time,” Cassidy Bell, the director of Ten Thousand Villages, said.
More than 20 stores in downtown Iowa City took out their tables and tents from Thursday through Sunday, stacking them outside their shops with merchandise on sale, while keeping their doors open to customers who wanted to peruse the selection inside as well.
The Summer Sidewalk Sales have been an Iowa City tradition since 1968, but this year, they took on new significance for stores like Ten Thousand Villages, a Ped Mall shop specializing in fair-trade merchandise that’s experienced a drop in customers over the last few months.
“Shopping outside is ideal for this kind of situation because you can be in open air and people can spread out, and we can spread out our product so it’s not so cramped in the store,” Bell said.
Bell said the sales brought out a volume of customers that she hadn’t seen in a while.
“A lot of people that have been out this weekend have mentioned that this is the first time they’ve really gone shopping since everything shut down,” she said.
Staff at The Shop Iowa City said the Sidewalk Sales weekend is usually one of their busiest of the year.
“We’ve seen a lot more online traffic recently, but it’s been busy again with this weekend and having everything out and open again,” Harrison Vontrager, an employee at The Shop Iowa City, said.
Ten Thousand Villages also said the weekend went better than its staff expected.
“It’s been fairly comparable in sales to previous years, just a little bit less,” Bell said. “So even though our month is down, at least this weekend gave us a nice boost.”
With the Downtown Block Party and other summer events called off this year, Bell said still having this one at least brought some sense of normalcy back, even if the reminders are still there that these aren’t normal times, like signs on store doors asking customers to wear masks.
“If things carry on for a long time or if we’re still in this kind of situation next summer, this might be a nice thing to be able to do and make it more of a weekend event,” Bell said.
Copyright 2020 KCRG. All rights reserved.
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Sidewalk Sales bring customers back to downtown Iowa City — even if just for a weekend - KCRG
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