Pay Rent When You Have Business Again

"Carmen, don't even say it. You don't need to pay rent. OK? Pay when you're open again. Pay when you have business again."

That is what Fosetter's landlord told Carmen during the hardest stretch of the pandemic. She tells the story with a lot of gratitude. Here it is in her words.

Holding on through the first year

At the time when all our businesses were at their hardest, we did delivery. We did distribution, then group buying, and I delivered orders out to the West Island myself. That's how we kept going, and for the American ginseng shop, it worked out really well too.

The logistics channels were also running fairly smoothly, so that got me through the hard part. That was the first year of the pandemic. The second year was harder to get through.

Asking the landlord

The other people I want to thank are my landlords. Sometimes I just had to put my pride aside. We had no money, right? So I asked the landlord whether he could give me some slack, or something. I'd heard that rent could be cut by seventy percent, something like that.

And he said, "Carmen, don't even say it. You don't need to pay rent. OK? Pay when you're open again. Pay when you have business again."

Honestly, I could have bowed down to them. That's real human warmth.

Years of watching each other work

I have two landlords, and we go back many years. They watched me come to work in Chinatown and keep working hard. I was good to them, and they were very good to me too. In a moment of real trouble, they stepped up. They said, don't even say it, it's free, and they waited until I had business again before I paid rent.

I think it goes both ways. You treat people well, so they put themselves in your shoes too. So for me, the way to be is a little simpler, a little more upright, with a little better attitude. Then whatever hard times come, everyone helps us get through them together.

The people who helped

The landlords are on a longer list. When Carmen talks about how Fosetter got here, she thanks everyone who supported her along the way. There is the Uncle who brought her into the ginseng trade, and all her suppliers and wholesalers, including the ones in Hong Kong. "They gave me the information for all my business," she says. "They were my eyes." She thanks her business partners, and she thanks her mother.

"Without them, there's no me."

How the delivery side of this story grew into a service you can still use today is in Winter roads are icy, so we deliver. You can find Fosetter at 78 Rue De La Gauchetière Ouest in Montreal's Chinatown, or read more about us.