ECONOMY
offering more services to do that, but it was COVID that
gave the push to make the city council say yes more easily.”
While some Port St. Lucie small businesses have been hit
hard by the pandemic, others have actually thrived.
NEW WAYS OF DOING THINGS
David Dow of Dow Decorating, which has a showroom at
1489 St. Lucie West Blvd., near the Publix shopping plaza, has
been in business in the city for a little more than two years.
Yet the interior design company boasts a prior 30-year-plus
history in Connecticut.
After closing their doors at the start of the pandemic and
keeping their fingers crossed they’d survive, Dow and his
wife, Kathy, realized they were designated an essential business
and could reopen.
“We’d been working with SBDC consultant Michael
Bernard,” Dow said, “and we attended the Business Accelerator
Program classes. A lot of it was like a refresher course for
us, since we’d been in business so long, but it taught us a lot
about getting started in Florida. We also learned a lot about
new digital marketing techniques that was very useful. We’ve
learned to use a combination of digital marketing through our
website and more traditional newspaper and magazine ads.”
The results have been impressive. Dow said his sales have
almost doubled year over year and, in fact, the company
recorded its best sales figures ever. Dow believes the pandemic
actually helped his business because customers were
restricted to their homes and began to want to complete a lot
of home improvement projects.
“But we did learn a lot about how to market ourselves using
Google searches online,” Dow said. “We now have more
ROB DOWNEY
David and Kathy Dow own an interior decorating business in St. Lucie
West. They attended SBDC Business Navigator classes, where they were introduced
to digital marketing techniques. Use of these, in part, has helped
>> the company record its best-ever sales figures, despite the pandemic.
Port St. Lucie Magazine 29
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