NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The past year hasn't been kind to many businesses, especially those that rely on other businesses to have business of their own.
With no one headed to the office this past year, dry cleaners and clothing stores struggled with low foot traffic.
"The past two months have been pretty good, we've been surprised," Kelly Risner, manager at Crestwood Cleaners in North Little Rock said. "I mean in March there was all of a sudden a hit one day, and it just went down."
After a year of that, though, they're finally starting to get back to normal.
"We're not back to where we were pre-pandemic, but we are making strides and getting there," Risner said. "So the future is promising."
The reason why they're starting to look like their normal selves again may surprise you.
It's you!
"Nobody was wearing dress shirts, nobody was wearing suits," Risner said. "If they put a dress shirt on for a zoom meeting, they had it on for an hour, hour max, and would hang it back up and have shorts or pajama bottoms on."
With restrictions lifting and many offices allowing employees to return to the building, it means the traditional office attire is becoming more commonplace.
It's not just the ones cleaning your clothes who have noticed it either.
"In the past few months, the world has totally opened back up," Kendall Sandifer, owner of Fringe Clothing in the River Market, said. "The River Market, we now have the farmers market opening back up, people are ready to get out and do things, and when they get out and do things they want to look good."
Business for Sandifer has skyrocketed over the past few months, more so than any other point over the past year.
"It feels almost record-breaking, and maybe it's because we're so excited to see people again and have people shopping, but it has just boomed," Sandifer said.
With more of out lives reopening by the day, it's a chance to get back to normal for both ends of the business.
"Hope, hope would be my word, there's hope for normalcy again, or a new normal, whatever that might be, hope that things will return," Risner said. "Businesses thrive, not just ours, but everybody's, cause when everybody's doing good, we're all doing good."