Gabe Trew is hopeful that the situation for Canberra's small businesses will turn around, but declining sales and the vacant shopfronts around him have him looking for reassurance.
Mr Trew owns POP Canberra, a retail store stocking local goods on Braddon's Lonsdale Street, which has seen a rocky start to the year.
His experience is not uncommon to Canberra as many businesses say they're struggling to claw back ground lost to the Omicron strain of COVID-19.
"From December 30 to January we just started noticing the street getting really quiet," Mr Trew said. "Businesses around us [were] closing down and we were really seeing a steep decline in shoppers, particularly during the week but also during the weekends as well."
"That was quite a fast decline. Even more so than the usual December to January kind of drop-off."
After closing for nearly three months last year due to the territory's lockdown, Mr Trew said the store's team realised that pivoting from their original business model wasn't working.
Moving the store online became a focus for a while, but it didn't make a huge difference in bringing back revenue. Face-to-face interaction with customers is a crucial part of the business model, Mr Trew said, but while lockdown has long since lifted, getting back to basics is proving difficult.
Canberra's small business networks are charged with a sense of desperation, as people consider where to turn next, he said.
"Other small businesses and Canberra people just basically say they can't weather the storm anymore."
"Really unexpected revenue and really inconsistent trading" as well as the emotional turbulence of the pandemic was becoming too much for some, he said.
Around him, four shopfronts have closed, and the absence of shoppers from one of Canberra's liveliest streets has him worried.
"I feel that Lonsdale Street in particular is in real trouble, and that we could be in for a long-term problem because the street has little life left on it," Mr Trew said.
"Where it used to be once bustling and humming with people from the first thing on a Saturday morning until the last thing on a Sunday evening, that feeling has really evaporated."
Mr Trew said that if the current situation didn't change at all from how it is now his business would be viable for just another three months.
That said, he did think that Canberrans were ready to "get out again, and really want to see each other and go shopping, eat lunch together and spend time face-to-face."
"People want to ... get out there and help businesses, but at the same time there is a lot of fear and hesitation to do that," Mr Trew said.
"Sometimes the words are there but the actions aren't."
