Like many small business owners, Yuri Kim has seen a lot of highs and lows during the pandemic. She received a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan for her San Jose plant shop, Fractal Flora, in May, which helped pay the rent for a few months, but she had to lay off her six part-time employees.
“Should I even continue this business, or does it make more sense to just close it down?” Kim said she asked herself, repeatedly. “I’m so happy that I have an opportunity to still be here.”
Fractal Flora was part of San Jose’s Moment program, a small-business incubator in the city’s downtown that provides subsidized rent in converted garage spaces in San Pedro Square. After two years, the shops have to move out and find their own spaces. As her involvement with Moment rolled to a close, Kim was able to open a new store just a few miles away in the Rose Garden neighborhood of San Jose.

During the first few months of the pandemic, Kim was selling less than what she was last year. But as the year wore on, sales slowly started to pick up.
“As you spend more time home and you’re less able to go outside, you want to make your space comfortable and beautiful,” Kim said. “Even the suppliers we purchase our plants from say their business has been better now than pre-pandemic because the interest in plants has grown so much.”