Sunny Days consults community on future of business

By Jamie Swinnerton
Tompkins Weekly

 

For four years, Sunny Days of Ithaca has been the downtown stop to find some of the best locally made products that represent the Ithaca and Finger Lakes region. Now, the business is looking to the future and wants to include the community and its customers in any possible changes.

On March 29, Deirdre Kurzweil, who co-owns the store with her husband Todd, posted a message on the Sunny Days Facebook page letting the store’s followers know that the lease for the shop will be up in about a year, and they were exploring all of their long-term options for the store. The store’s numbers are all heading in the right direction, Kurzweil said, but neither she nor Todd had taken a paycheck from the store since opening it. Recently, Kurzweil had lost her lucrative full-time job in market research.

“I knew it was unlikely Sunny Days would be able to pay me for several years, and having that steady income was critical for my family,” Kurzweil said in the post. “The “silver lining” of this change is that I now can dedicate myself even more to Sunny Days and its continued success. The downside is that if we are to continue, I need to figure out how to improve the business enough to start drawing some income from it!”

Kurzweil’s husband is a teacher scheduled to retire in about two years. The business employs two other staff members, and Kurzweil said they are dedicated to being a living-wage employer. It would be easier for the couple to pay themselves if they had not made that decision.

“That was a commitment that I made from the get-go, that if I couldn’t pay an employee a living wage I wasn’t going to have a business,” Kurzweil said.
Finding another day job that allowed her the flexibility to also work in the store is unrealistic, Kurzweil said. Her former position was out of an office just up the street, and the company supported her when Sunny Days opened.

One of the decisions the business will have to make is whether or not it will stay in its current location at 123 South Cayuga St. Kurzweil said there’s nothing wrong with the rent or the landlord, but the business could operate in a smaller space if it needed to. For the most part, the post generated a positive response. Several customers declared that they would follow Sunny Days to wherever they went. Inviting the public into the thought process is in keeping with the relationship Kurzweil and the store has built with its customers.

“I consider the store, as much as anything, a service for the community,” Kurzweil said. “Whether it be locals or visitors, a big part of our goal is to just be here for people. Which means that whatever major decisions that we need to make about if or how we move forward that I feel like the community that has supported us and gotten us to where we are now deserves to be apart of that process.”

 

Kurzweil understands why a business owner might not want to advertise that things aren’t going well or their business might close, but when the stores do close she has heard people say ‘I wish I had known.’ This is not to say that Sunny Days is closing. Far from it. Kurzweil said they definitely do not plan to shut their doors, the business is solid and the revenue is improving each year. But there might be a need for some changes in the future.

The location of the store on the corner of South Cayuga and Green was an important one when the business opened. Kurzweil had seen the storefront remain empty for a while, and the large glass windows facing Green make for ideal window-shopping. The corner had become part of the store’s identity.

“It’s such an important corner to downtown I wanted to fill it with something vibrant and something that represented the community, and so I think we’ve succeeded in doing that,” Kurzweil said. “While part of me wants to stay in this location for those reasons, I also need to make sure that we’re doing what’s best for the long-term solidity of the business model.”

Before posting to Facebook Kurzweil said there were conversations as a family, and conversations with the store’s employees, as well as with the building’s landlord. Right now, Kurzweil said they are just waiting to see what options are out there.

“I feel like I’m at the point where I need to really make this work and figure out a way to pay me or to potentially decide that it’s not a viable thing for us right now,” Kurzweil said. “But to even think about the possibility of the business not continuing is not something that I’m really even seriously considering.”

But wherever the future of the business goes, Kurzweil said she will continue to encourage people to shop small and local whenever possible. Despite the frustrations that residents may have with the Commons, Kurzweil said she thinks it’s still a great downtown and an asset to the community.