Here at the Bazaar, we knew we had to keep pushing when the world around us started rapidly changing. While many industries and businesses came to a standstill, we got to work, challenging ourselves to not only maintain the culture and community we had created, but to grow and improve upon it. Take a look behind the scenes at the Bazaar at some of the ways we’ve continued building our business, one challenge at a time.

As an essential business, we felt the pressure to keep our doors open. But, as a member of our community, we knew we needed to go beyond that. When the unemployment rate reached a staggering 14.7% in April, we knew we had to do our part to combat job loss. Through concentrated hiring and management efforts, we were determined to grow our workforce, even in this economic downturn. We are proud to say that we were able to create positions and bring on more amazing talent to our team, from dedicated part-time cashiers to senior shift managers. The collective efforts of our team have allowed us to keep growing our amazing talent base, even in the most uncertain times.

When we began adding new talent to our team, we realized the need to reinforce the Bazaar foundationally to best support our growing company. We shifted internal efforts to host job fairs, casting a wider net to find the best people to join our team. We changed our onboarding efforts, catering to the needs and job functions of each individual and making sure they had the resources they needed to succeed. We also revamped our tech infrastructure, bolstering our sales team and streamlining our internal processes.

As we continue to grow internally, we’ve also pushed ourselves to create new connections and partnerships externally. In addition to adding 700 manufacturers to our Bazaar family, we have also gained 2,500 independent retail customers. We take enormous pride in working with such incredible business partners, with some of our manufacturer relationships dating back 30+ years.

It’s fun and easy to talk about things like our exciting rebrand and resilience throughout COVID, but in truth, the amount of behind-the-scenes work that goes into these successes is anything but glamorous. It truly does take a village, and ours is composed of our team, our business partners, and of course, our customers. While we believe in innovation and evolution as crucial components of growing a successful and resilient business, we know that longevity and strength truly lies in a solid foundation.