Health and beauty businesses have taken a massive hit with another lockdown in Perth.
Beauty, nail, hairdressing services and fitness venues were forced to close during the four-day lockdown, which is expected to last until 12.01am on Saturday.
North Beach-based Timeless Beauty Therapy owner Jessica Cullen said the lockdown might have been planned for four days only but there would be a ripple effect for small businesses.
Ms Cullen said she was losing out about $4300 in cancellations for this week alone, not including the loss from walk ins, appointments and sale opportunities.
“When lockdowns happen, obviously it’s definite in cancellations and loss of revenue, but also that doesn’t finish when the lockdown finishes,” she said.
“A lot of people start cancelling whether there’s fear or loss of income or their event was cancelled that the booking was for.”
Ms Cullen said the business was eligible for a $2000 assistance grant for the Anzac Day weekend lockdown but only just caught up with the impact from previous lockdowns.
“We weren’t eligible for any of the synergy rebates because we’re in a local shopping centre … JobKeeper finished for us back in October,” she said.
“We eventually just caught up ourselves because a lot of the shutdowns previously, we’ve just sorted out invoices for.
“We caught up on the rent that was overdue from last lockdown.”
Sensory depravation floating studio Float Lab owner Jo McBride said it was a “real slow burn” to get back up and running after each lockdown.
“Generally it’s a good month before we start getting back to people coming in again on a regular basis,” she said.
Ms McBride said between the North Beach and Wembley labs, she lost about $2500 from the people who called to cancel on the first day of the lockdown.
“Luckily some of them have rescheduled for next week but then again if it goes longer than four days, it would have to be rescheduled again,” she said.
“My staff are all casual, so I feel for them the most.
“If it does go longer than four days, hopefully there would be some financial support for people like casuals who can’t get paid and businesses that aren’t getting customers.”
Ms Cullen said supporting local businesses during this time was important.
“Even buying a gift voucher now helps and they can use it later,” she said.
“Rather than buying products from all these franchises, there’s a beauty salon somewhere that would have stock sitting on the shelf this week that hasn’t been sold.”