Regina shoppers are making their way to a couple baby stores in the city that are just five weeks away from closing. Dec. 19 will mark the last day of operation for Regina’s Hello Baby and Groovy Mama, with Hello Baby owner Sharolyn Renwick preparing for retirement. Groovy Mama will also shut down on Dec.19, with owners Cara Zimmerman and Murray MacDonald ready to take on a new adventure, with their own child reaching their teenage years. In a statement to CTV News, Groovy Mama’s owners shared the impact the store has made, both on on families and themselves. “I didn’t realize when I bought this store, I was buying a community. I’ve cried, laughed and hugged more moms and dads than I can count. I’ve held them through breastfeeding pain, pregnancy losses, babies being sent to hospitals. We’ve celebrated milestones and first birthdays. I’ve made lifelong friendships that will last long after the store,” the statement read. “I’m so thankful to have had an impact on so many families and I will cherish the memories. This is the best job I have ever had.” One of the parents the stores have made an impact on is Amanda Sherman, the manager of the newly established Babyease. “We just found out this week that they were closing, which is really sad,” she said. While the Queen City prepares for the loss of the stores that lasted multiple decades, Babyease is just finishing up its second week. In their process, Sherman said the store is looking to make the operation more personalized. “We just found that a lot of the time, like as soon as we had our kids, we realized that people were like ‘Oh, I’d been to three baby showers in the past three weeks, and I didn’t know what to get you,” she said. “Or we would have our companies that would send us like baby gift boxes, and they were just chocolate, and they had nothing really usable at all in them for being first time moms.” “It just came across as slightly less sentimental, and it didn’t really look like sometimes they had put a ton of thought into it.” Babyease is looking to create a boutique-style location that can specialize in shipping to various points of Saskatchewan. “It’s not even necessarily for the moms in Regina, but maybe the moms who live in Yorkton, Weyburn, Fort Qu’Appelle or Swift Current that can’t always get to a boutique,” Sherman said. Situated on Winnipeg Street near the Eastgate neighbourhood, the store serves as another local option, which is getting harder for small business owners under the shadows of tariffs and rising costs.
