AURORA, Colo. — Stanley Marketplace is starting a delivery system as a way to help retailers and others reach customers given limited capacities due to COVID-19.
Christmas cheer fills the air at Stanley Marketplace. But it's not exactly full of people, which this time of year is tough.
"We do at least 50% of our business this last month of the year. We are a gift store, so the biggest gift the time of the year is Christmas," said Stephanie Shearer, co-owner of Trunk Nouveau. "We lost three months, a whole entire quarter of our year. A quarter of sales. We are running currently at about 75% deficit."
So to help retailers, the market came up with a creative, thoughtful idea.
"It's like 'Stanley Prime.' We're bringing small business goods to local folks in the neighborhood," said Mark Shaker, Stanley Marketplace Partner.
Stanley Delivers became a delivery method for people.
"We got 6 miles via our little electronic vehicle here," Shaker said.
This special sleigh tops out at about 18 miles per hour.
"As it set right now, you order online, it's delivered to you within 24 hours here within our sort of radius," he added.
They also added an online portal to help ship around the country.
"The minute Stanley Delivers launched, we started getting orders in. In fact, we weren't quite prepared for that and how many orders we were going to get. And so, having that has been like having a second store which right now we really need," Shearer said.
It's a small Christmas miracle for retail shops within the market.
"Having it able to go from our little store to your front door, it's a game-changer," she said.
The market hopes to keep going with this past the pandemic, but in the short term:
"I think it's going to be the difference on whether or not we keep our gates open or not," Shearer added.
Because staying open is on the top of all their Christmas wishlists.