COVID-19 and Hippo Hardware

March 23, 2020

Dear Hippo Customers,

Please forgive our delay in reaching out. It’s been a very hectic time for everyone, including our staff and ownership. For the safety of our community, our last day open to the public was Thursday March 19^th. We have since had to lay off 90% of our staff, some of whom have been with us for decades. It was a heartbreaking decision but we are simply unable to offer a livable income right now. We deeply thank them for all their hard work and sincerely hope to rehire them once this crisis is over.

Our situation:

Hippo took out a loan to make sure all staff left with cash for all 2020 paid time off (vacation, sick, and personal). We are unsure of the future at this point as it’s unknown how long this all will last. Our plan is to shift our business online as much as possible and continuing working safely from our store.

What we are doing:

• Online orders: We are fulfilling web orders and greatly appreciate your financial support. We will be listing new products online as quickly as we can in addition to packing and shipping out orders. We are shipping out twice a week. 
  
• Email: We are still responding to email, although slower due to the deep reduction in staff. Please send in any questions you may have as well as products you’re looking for and we’ll get back to you as soon as we’re able.
• Gift Certificates: We now have online gift certificates! If you can, please consider purchasing one to help us weather through this time.
• Returns: At this time, we are not able to process returns. When we reopen, we will have a 30-day return window for all purchases made online or in store any time after February 17^th.
• Repairs/rewiring: We are looking into offering light fixture rewiring and lock rebuilding through the mail. If you’re interested in either of these services, please contact us.
• Video/Blog/Newsletters: We are exploring new ways to communicate and hope to turn this difficult time into a source of new creativity. We will keep you posted on any new experiments!

In closing: Thank to you all so much for all the support. We know this is hard on everyone. We have faith in our amazing, resilient, creative, resourceful Portland community that we can all make it through maybe even a little brighter than before.

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