How small business owners are dealing with rising costs

As soon as you walk into Tochterman’s Fishing Tackle, a store in Baltimore, you get hit with the smell of shrimp and garlic. That comes from gels and sprays meant to go on fishing lures, and some of those lures are getting more expensive.

Take a plastic jar filled with biodegradable imitation eels as an example. It’s not the fake eels that are really going up price, but the jars that they are packaged in.

“The price on getting the material to make this jar has gone up considerably,” said Tony Tochterman, one of the store’s owners.

Right now, a jar of the fake eels goes for about $22. Tochterman expects that’ll go up to cover the increased cost of the plastic packaging, which is derived from oil.

“A lot of things are done because of petroleum,” said Tochterman.

Transportation costs are also up. Tochterman said a lot of his suppliers are upping the minimum he has to order to get free shipping. So, he’s buying more of certain products to avoid paying for shipping.

“You can't afford to absorb that,” he said.

Around the corner at Local Stitch, a brand new yarn store, owner Natasha Jones is facing the same challenge. Fewer of her distributors are covering shipping.

Meanwhile, when she adds online sales later this year, she won’t be able to cover it, either.

“I don't have enough of a profit margin to be able to provide free shipping in the way that these big corporations do,” she said.

She’s relying on customers who want to seek out her unique product. Some of the wool for sale is dyed in house. Jones’s fingers are actually tinged blue from indigo.

“Sometimes my cat's paws are blue, as well,” she laughed.

She also sells wool from other companies, and earlier this summer she noticed that wool prices from one domestic mill increased by about 25%.

“We were selling this at $28 a skein, and now we have to sell it at $35 per skein,” she said. “That is not adding anything for us. That is just to accommodate the price difference that they passed on to us.”

So, she’s offering less of this yarn, because she doesn’t want to be the shop that only has expensive wool.

“That's just not fun,” she said.

Yarn sales generally slow in August, but across town, at the ice cream scoop shop and factory The Charmery, it’s the busiest time of year. Ahmed Bakayoko (who goes by T) described his technique as he wrangles a five-gallon bag of milk, cream, and sugar into an ice cream maker.

“Hold it like a turtle, by the neck, grab it upside down, so you control the flow,” he said.

He’s making a batch of Tell Tale Chocolate, a reference to the short story by Edgar Allan Poe (who died in Baltimore). David Alima, the Charmery’s owner, has also tried out some weird flavors, like Biscuits and Gravy — a sage and black pepper ice cream with biscuit pieces in it.

“We were very skeptical it’d be good, and then you taste it, and you’re like ‘I like that!’” he said.

Alima, who has a picture of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka in his office, started the company 13 years ago, and there’s a feeling of Wonka-esque whimsy in the air (and quotes from Wonka on the wall).

But the increased cost of ingredients is real.

“Everything is just rising. Chocolate, strawberries, sprinkles,” he said.

Passing all those costs on to customers feels rude.

“Not just rude, but impossible. I mean, we have a scoop of ice cream,” said Alima.

There’s only so much people will pay for one. A single scoop currently goes for about $5.90.

So, one thing Alima’s trying to do? Sell more scoops. Two of their five shops have extended their hours to midnight. Because why not chase down a couple National Bohemian beers with some Tell Tale Chocolate?

Still, Alima said business is just okay. It’s hard when one rainy weekend makes a big dent in sales. So, his goal is simply to carry on.

“Every year that we survive feels like a celebration,” he said.

To paraphrase Willy Wonka: you can’t go backwards. You’ve got to go forwards. Better press on.