Initiated last spring, Taos MainStreet’s Business Alive program helped COVID-19-embattled merchants expand their customer bases by building online stores. Now the learnings from that program are available in a LOR tool kit that guides other businesses looking to do the same. 

TAOS, NEW MEXICO: When tourism slowed to a halt and Taos storefronts closed at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, local merchants—an estimated 40 to 50 percent of whom lacked e-commerce capabilities—were left reeling. In response to the urgent need, Taos MainStreet, supported by a grant from the LOR Foundation, created Business Alive. The program connected shop owners with Taos High Tech, a local firm that built online stores for each business at minimal cost. 

Five businesses in Taos piloted the program and have seen encouraging results, with some merchants recording their first-ever online sales and others reporting revenue increases up to 10 percent.

“I felt like we were so vulnerable only being able to sell through our brick-and-mortar,” says Elana Lombard, who co-owns Taos’ Mudd N Flood Mountain Shop, an outdoor gear store, with her husband, Chris Pieper. When COVID-19 hit, Mudd N Flood was closed for two months, but the Business Alive program provided some relief: Lombard estimates Mudd N Flood brought in about $2,000 in additional revenue in the first month the new website was live. 

"COVID-19 peeled back some real vulnerabilities in our business community,” says Jake Caldwell, LOR’s Taos-area program officer. “Accessing the online marketplace was a tangible one Taos MainStreet was ready to address."

Rural shop owners across the country are facing a similarly fraught retail environment as they try to keep their businesses viable amidst the pandemic. And building a website fit for e-commerce isn’t easy, which is why LOR pulled on the experiences of Taos merchants to create a handbook for business owners looking to grow their online presence. 

The handbook takes shop owners step-by-step through the basics of taking a business online. From choosing the right e-commerce platform to marketing an online store and tracking inventory, it connects merchants with essential resources and documents real-world examples of the promises and challenges of launching e-commerce. You can find the handbook on LOR’s website and download the condensed tool kit here. 

Meanwhile, Taos MainStreet is already working with a new cohort of businesses looking to build their e-commerce presences. 

“The idea is that these merchants are developing a tool and it will benefit their business in the long run,” says Charles Whitson, executive director of Taos MainStreet. “It will help create another revenue stream for their business and hopefully give them some long-term stability.”

For business owners like Lombard and Pieper, who stared down a scary loss of revenue when the pandemic hit, that new era of e-commerce is already taking shape.