Gov. Gavin Newsom met with retail executives and a retail worker Tuesday to mark the inaugural session of a digital listening tour to collect viewpoints about how to reopen an economy that government agencies have shut down to curb health dangers posed by the coronavirus.
“I can only imagine the frustration when you hear from people like us, me, mayors, health directors and we say, ‘Hey, you can open up with 25 percent capacity,’ you probably sit there rolling your eyes, saying these guys just don’t have a clue,” Gov. Newsom said at the outset of the meeting.
Those varying views from the front lines of retailers, both large and small, arrived early and often during the meeting.
“Our employees and our customers are anxious to get back to normal, some semblance of re-engagement,” said Sonia Syngal, chief executive officer with San Francisco-based Gap, an apparel retailing titan. Syngal told the governor and other state leaders that “We want to work with you to be the gold standard for what safe retail looks like.”
It was clear during the wide-ranging discussion that more than a few retailers had become restless after weeks of being closed.
“I’m ready to start solving some problems,” said Judson Heard, a store manager in Southern California with Patagonia, an outdoor clothing store. “There is a feeling of sitting on the sidelines.”
The Zoom digital meeting was part of the governor’s task force that’s looking at ways to reopen California businesses in a safe and healthy fashion before restrictions imposed by state and local governments throttle the state’s frail economy.
Retailers large and small participated in the meeting, whose beginning was plagued by a failure to stream the early stages of the digital meeting on the Zoom platform.
Jim Mayfield, the principal owner of Rainbow Ag, a Ukiah-based agricultural feed, equipment, and services firm, expressed during the meeting a concern that often has been expressed regarding how retailers and other merchants might operate safely when they reopen their doors to widespread shopping.
“Should we let people come into the store? It keeps me up at night,” Mayfield said during the meeting.
Mayfield also urged the governor and other state officials to not craft restrictive, one-size-fits-all rules for reopening that stifle the ability of individual merchants to fashion safe and — possibly creative ways to resume relatively normal operations.
“Just give us a guideline, some structure,” Mayfield said. “You’ve got to free up the entrepreneurs to let them respond to this.”
Marielle Deguia, who worked at a store in San Jose’s Santana Row before the merchant furloughed employees, said the store operations typically called for customers and store employees to be in close quarters with each other. Asked by the governor about that, Deguia indicated that it could be tricky to replicate pre-virus working conditions.
“It will be a very interesting dynamic to come back after everything that’s happened,” Deguia said.
The governor pointed out that while it’s crucial to ensure that California is healthy and that individuals who have been isolated socially also stay healthy, it’s also vital to assure a healthy economy.
“The economic health of our communities is foundational,” Gov. Newsom said.
