SUDBURY –
With the arrival of Boxing Day, northern residents are still shopping for gifts, and one Sudbury business owner has taken to social media to ask locals to support his shop.
“If everyone in Greater Sudbury would spend just $3.00 in my store. It would change my life. The struggle is real,” wrote owner of Dan’s Candy Store, Daniel Wiebes, in a Facebook post.
The post has received almost 400 shares and 100 comments since he shared it on Dec.21.
“I’m overwhelmed it’s been non stop for two-days. People have come in they just said we just needed to know,” Wiebes told CTV News.
Wiebes has been in the party rental business for over two decades traveling around northern Ontario participating in Christmas festivals, school fundraisers, and Canada Day celebrations, but that all changed almost two years ago.
“All of a sudden one day I woke up and we had over 100 festivals booked and every single festival, every single school fun fair, every single wedding was all cancelled in one day and we had to decide on what we were going to do,” he continued.
“We couldn’t go to parks, we couldn’t go to the arena, we couldn’t go to halls, so we had to figure out a way to get the customers to come to us and the biggest thing that everybody likes doesn’t matter rain or shine is treat.”
With the colder weather, Wiebes closed up the trailer and decided to bring his business indoors.
“We opened up our doors three weeks ago and people just weren’t coming…so I just put it out there to the universe. I just picked a number. I said if everybody just spent 3 dollars and just came and said hi it would change my life,” he continued.
“If things don’t change I won’t be there when things go back to normal. That’s all I got to say.”
With over 40,000 views, Wiebes says he’s definitely noticed more people coming into the store since the post went up.
“Christmas Eve, we have our family tradition where the kids all get special treats and we watch a movie together and we came here,” says shopper Jodi Armstrong.
“He’s done so much for our community helping to support all of the organizations and activities we have going on so we like to keep our business local and support him to make sure he’s around for a really long time.”
Wiebes wants to encourage everyone to support all small businesses as he knows he’s not the only one struggling during these times.
