'I Need to Keep the Lights On': One Man's Battle to Keep His Small Business Alive

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- It started last Tuesday, a sudden decline in the number of haircuts. By Saturday, the salon owner, Zach Edwards, was sitting in his office looking nervously at a line of empty barber chairs."I'm really, really worried," said Edwards, of his shop, Emerson Joseph, a male

Zach Edwards, owner of Emerson Joseph, a men's salon and grooming lounge in Charlotte, N.C., March 14, 2020.

So, on Saturday, as he sat watching his salon, he was also asking himself this question: How should he balance the obligation to be socially responsible about the coronavirus outbreak with the fear that closing down altogether will bring financial ruin to himself and his 20 employees? But the situation is changing by the day. Last week, Edwards instructed his staff to always ask people coming through the door to wash their hands.

It was his mother who lent him some of the money he needed to buy the salon in 2011, and his mother who talked him through it, warning him not to give in to what he said were the seller’s cascading demands. Three years later, when she fell ill with ovarian cancer, it was Edwards who talked her through her chemotherapy sessions, calling every day. She died in 2014. He still tears up when he talks about her.

Jones, 31, who has worked at the salon for five years, said she was only just starting to absorb what it might mean financially if the shop had to close for a while.

 

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