Help Save Olivia’s Dollhouse Tea Room

#SmallBusinessRelief Olivia’s Dollhouse Tea Room in Lomita CA has been making magic and memories for children and their families for 13 years.  We are considered by many a loved institution in the South Bay.  Many South Bay teens and young adults got their first job at Olivia’s Dollhouse. The Covid -19 pandemic has completely crippled our beloved business since we depend on social interactions through parties, story times, princess camp and other interactive events to run our business and pay our overhead.  We do not have merchandise or food to sell while we are mandatorily closed.  Though we can do virtual parties through Zoom & FaceTimes, they make a small fraction of what our in person events make and do not make enough money to pay our overhead.  Though I have worked as the manager of Olivia’s Dollhouse Tea Room in Lomita since the day it opened in 2007, I just recently bought it along with Prestige Princess Character Co. in 2017. I love this business and the joy it brings to so many and can’t imagine having to shut it down because of this pandemic.  We survived through so much but never imagined a mandatory government shut down without any way to make money to sustain our business. We had to refund deposits for parties that couldn’t be implemented while still paying our overhead (rent, phone, WiFi, security system, insurance, utilities, pest control, taxes, loan, varies permits and licenses).We have been doing free events on Facebook Live to entertain children and to keep us busy and motivated. We will continue to do this because we know how hard this for families and especially the children. Their whole little lives have been turned upside down and it’s so hard for them to truly understand what’s going on.We did receive a small grant and the PPP that we knew would sustain us through June.  We were planning on being open for July and we were for 1 week but just received notice from the health department that we must again close ourdoors. We have now lost over 85k in parties, events and booked character gigs  without any way of recouping any of our loss income.  Even when we are allowed to re-open, I don’t know how long it will take to have our business get back to normal since people are very reluctant to gather in groups for parties and events. We have refrained from doing a Go Fund Me to raise funds to keep our business open because we know everyone is hurting and this has been hard on all of us but now after 4 months of being closed and not knowing when we can resume our business and when it will go back to sustaining itself, we have to ask for help.  I’ve only owned Olivia’s for the past 2 1/2 years and of course have not made a profit yet since we are still payingthe loan we took out to purchase it but we were actually finally catching up and paying down bills and our bookings were getting back up to where they use to be and then the pandemic happened and left us devastated. Any help would be completely appreciated. Olivia’s Dollhouse & Prestige Princess has always given back to our community.We donate to every school, church and organization that solicits us. We continually do free events for multiple nonprofits and donate our time,characters and even supplies to various causes. Now we have to ask for help to keep our businesses from shutting down.Thank you for taking the time to read this long story.