Last-Ditch Fundraiser Saves The Downtown Halifax Shop Venus Envy
HALIFAX — A downtown Halifax institution will get to keep its lights on after its pleas for help were answered by hundreds of loyal customers.
Venus Envy, an education-based sex shop and bookstore, has been operating out of its Barrington Street home since 1999.
Earlier this week, owner Marshall Haywood launched a GoFundMe campaign for the business, after pandemic shutdowns and the cost of being forced from its home threatened to close the shop.
“It’s hard to know when to ask for help,” Haywood wrote in a social media post. “The cost of moving and renovating is a huge and unexpected challenge that the past year has left us unequipped to deal with.”
Haywood launched the campaign Tuesday night with a goal of raising $15,000, and by Wednesday morning it was fully funded. Now, the campaign has raised more than $22,000.
“Gosh, I’m just so overwhelmingly grateful… Just so many people letting us know that they appreciate and value Venus Envy in the community has just been really overwhelming. We’re just all like weepy messes,” Haywood told Huddle Wednesday afternoon.
Hit hard by third lockdown
Haywood says he’d managed to keep the lights on at Venus Envy through most of the pandemic. Sales were down but he secured some federal subsidies and sold enough to keep his head above water.
But then that the latest lockdown hit, and downtown Halifax became a ghost town for the third time in just over a year.
“That was the one that finally hit us very hard,” Marshall says.
Venus Envy has always relied heavily on foot traffic and “personalized customer service,” but with bars and restaurants closed nobody was walking in. Problems with the shop’s online ordering system compounded the issue.
Not only did sales fall off a cliff, but the shop finally started to feel the financial pinch of preparing to move into a new space.
“We really tried to tough it out. We maxed every amount of credit we had,” Marshall says with a soft chuckle. Eventually, however, he realized he needed help.
“It was a hard decision to ask for community support, but I’m really lucky that I have a number of people in the community… who wanted to help. And I’m just really grateful,” he says.
‘Bad capitalists’ and putting community before profit
Cynics might raise their eyebrows at a business asking for donations to keep the lights on. But Haywood says he thinks of Venus Envy as more than a typical, profit-driven enterprise.
“We consider ourselves a feminist business, as much as one can be under capitalism. We also generally say that we are very bad capitalists,” Haywood says.
He points out that Venus Envy donates to local organizations and pays its staff “as well as we can.” Haywood also didn’t lay anyone off during the pandemic, even when they couldn’t come to work.
He says those choices “might not be the best business decision” but align with Venus Envy’s core beliefs.
In 1998, when the shop first opened, a feminist bookstore and sex-positive shop was a revelation for many Haligonians and filled a big void in the city.
Haywood bought the business in 2009 and says he’s tried to create a non-judgmental space where people can come and ask questions feel welcome.
“Even though we are a business, it also feels like we are a community space,” he says.
Scroll through the comments on the GoFundMe page and you get a sense of how important Venus Envy is to many people.
One donator, who appeared online as Rena Kulczycki, said discovering the shop was a “revelation.”
“I remember how radically they changed the landscape of access to information and resources when they filled the void that existed before them. I trust these folks and this place to go above and beyond in every way and I am ever grateful for the resources and expertise they bring into the store,” they said.
“Beyond their store walls, the contributions they have made and continue to make through workshops, donations, partnerships, and advocacy have contributed tremendously to the culture shift that makes it possible for me (and others) to explore and celebrate gender and sexuality with less fear, judgement and shame, and more affirmation, love and joy.”
Reopening planned for early July
Haywood says those kinds of comments are deeply meaningful.
“It’s really been amazing to feel so like, just lifted out my community. And it makes me feel like, maybe I’m a bad capitalist, but it also makes me just want to double down on the other ways that Venus Envy helps the community that supports us,” Haywood said.
With the money raised through the GoFundMe campaign, Haywood plans to pay down some credit card debt and create a new, better online ordering system.
Meanwhile, the shop is being forced to move because of renovations taking place at its long-time home at 1598 Barrington Street.
Venus Envy’s last day in its current space will be Monday, June 28. The shop is having a massive sale ahead of the move and Haywood encourages customers to come to visit the old location one more time.
He says Venus Envy will be back with a soft opening on July 2, about a block-and-a-half away from its current home, at 1727 Barrington Street.
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