SAVANNAH, Ga. (WSAV) — Small businesses statewide and locally are struggling with supply chain issues from COVID and now record inflation. They’re doing whatever they can to deal with the financial issues.

Corey Pennington is one of the owners of Pennyfix in downtown Savannah. The business sells high end collector item sneakers. Despite all the economis issues, Pennington says they’re holding their own.

“So, we sell through online, we sell through social media, and we sell on eBay, but inflation is infecting everything, and we do notice it,” he said.

While online sales are good, Pennington says they the sneakers market is requiring them to pay for items they sell and they’re paying more for transportation to get their shoes to their brick-and-mortar store.

“Because we sell on multiple platforms and other countries and different areas of this country luckily, we’re still able to maintain sales,” said Pennington. “But when people come in they see that our shoe might be higher than what the normal resale value would be but that’s also because we’re having to pay high to obtain that item.

“Our numbers have to reflect us getting the item, us seeing the exact percentage that we need to make in return to even keep two stores running and to pay employees to keep the power on,” said Pennington.

While they are holding their own, they also offer people the option of selling their own personal collector item shoes through the Pennyfix website and or business on consignment.

“And because of the economy now we can tell that more people are trying to you know, recoup some funds by selling items,” he said.

But Pennington says they’ve had to increase their consignment fee.

“Because of inflation, because of where we’re at as far as return on investment, we were at a lower rate and we just had to go up, we’re now at 15%,” said Pennington.

His co-owner Benjamin Gunter told WSAV, “I talked to two of our consigners, I broke the news to them and they were very understanding.”

Gunter expects those who have been doing consignment sales with Pennyfix will keep doing it despite a bigger take from the store.

Both owners also say in terms of the Savannah store, they are having more walk in customers because of summer tourism.

Jimmy Greenberg from Florida told us he was considering buying sneakers and said price would not keep him from making a purchase.

“Not if I get what I want,” Greenberg said.

Despite challenges the high-end product business is making it, but like every small business, every day can be a challenge.

“You just never know, and you hope for the best but we’re all kind of in that same weird territory,” Pennington said. “We don’t really know what’s going to happen.”