They still have a chance to try to do some business: Start an online store. But yes, overall it's going to be very hard for them, as it is for many others, because furniture shopping was always going to plummet during a global pandemic no matter what. There's no plausible scenario of social distancing or no social distancing under which they come out OK. They may have shuttered anyway even if they hadn't been forced to simply because no customers were coming through and it didn't make sense to remain open. Here in NYC a lot of restaurants made the decision to shutter entirely in advance of the official orders, because business had already plummeted substantially to the point that they were losing money no matter what.
Easy for many of us. Not always so easy for a small business owner. Even something turn-key like Shopify requires a lot of setup. Plus, you'd likely need to go to the shop to take product photos etc. which would not be permitted travel in some areas.
Even then, with a website up, how do they get any traffic to it? A sign in the window normally might work, but no one is driving by anyway since they assume everything is closed. Buying some ads may work, but now you're incurring even more costs when you're being bled dry already. Word-of-mouth is probably the best you can get. Plus, most people probably aren't going to purchase the kind of furniture you'd get from a boutique shop online - they want to see it, touch it, sit on it.
I've seen small clothing shops out there live streaming their products on Facebook and people buying via comments. I applaud their effort but also wonder how that can ever be enough. These stores exist today pretty much only because people want to buy this stuff in person, otherwise they'd just buy on Amazon.
The wheels need to start turning again sometime. Tax revenue is taking a huge hit which is also going to cripple government's ability to provide help now and in the future. I'm fearful that the economic impacts are going to be much worse and much longer lasting than we can even begin to imagine. I really hope I'm wrong.
