Hurricane Beryl affects summer retailer momentum
By Kristin Ely

Power outages and flooding affected business at The Admiralty in Galveston, Texas, for weeks after the storm.

While Hurricane Beryl hasn’t been the strongest storm to rip through Galveston, Texas, over the last 30 years its impact on the summer season still had a lasting impact on business.

Wendy LeCornu Morgan, who owns the coastal store, The Admiralty with her sister Leslie LeCornu and mother, Tina LeCornu, says the storm impacted what was already a slow start to summer.

Seaside Retailer caught up with Morgan in mid-August a little over a month after the hurricane. “It was a rough few weeks,” she said, recalling the storm. “It’s calmed down, it’s just that we lost all of momentum for the summer.”

According to Morgan, customers have been more reserved with their spending this season.

“People are spending more thoughtfully; they’re not just throwing their money around. Kids will come up to the counter and parents will say, ‘Remember, honey, I said you could get one thing,’ whereas in the past it was like ‘How many do you want?’”

Hurricane Beryl was just a Category 1 hurricane when it hit Texas, but, notes Morgan, “The way it knocked power out all over Texas, it affected everyone. I mean if it knocked power out in North Houston — those are our visitors — so if a tree landed on their house, it affected whether they were going on vacation or not. That really slowed down our business for folks coming down to visit, so not only were they not coming because they thought we had been destroyed, which we weren’t, we were ready to roll.”

The storm hit on Monday, July 8, and Morgan says, The Admiralty’s doors were open on Tuesday. “We didn’t have power, but we were ready to help people.”

Hurricane Beryl caused power outages and minor flooding in Galveston, Texas, and affected tourism for several weeks.
She describes the hurricane as a wind event with flooding in Galveston, but the flooding wasn’t as bad as predicted. They prepared the store for flooding by putting flood dams outside the doors, which Morgan describes as an absorbent pad. They also used duct and tire tape to tape up the doors to try to keep splashing water out. Those efforts paid off as the water only made it two feed inside the store. “It crept in a little bit under the dam but most of the water was held back, so we were really lucky.”

She adds that for the most part the island fared well. Lots of trees fell but they didn’t fall into the streets and power was out but it was restored street by street quickly in her opinion. She didn’t believe that the hurricane warranted an entire shutdown of the city, but people cancelled reservations and made alternate vacation plans.

“After about a week, we finally had the whole strand restored, which is the block that we are on, and we were all open and ready, but we really just weren’t seeing people coming down, and as soon as you start breathing the word August, folks are like ‘Oh back-to-school clothes,’ so they aren’t thinking about summer anymore”

While the store did pick up some back-to-school traffic, Morgan says, “Things seem to be sliding into fall now. We really just lost summer.”

Thankfully, according to Morgan, the company recently hired a new manager who has been training The Admiralty’s staff to sell.

“They’ve always been good at selling, but now they’re enthusiastically showing people stuff and saying, hey did you see this? And that has made a huge difference in our business. We are making really good sales considering the traffic we are getting. The effort we are putting in is 100% responsible for the sales we are getting. That approach to selling is what has kept us going the last three weeks.”

Morgan says she still feels hopeful about the future, but the store has had to slow down its buying “which is very hard to do when you aren’t sure whether or not things are going to pick back up in a few weeks.”

This is also the time of year when the store is placing orders for Christmas, “so it is challenging placing orders when it’s been slow for something that’s happening in three months.”

This isn’t the first hurricane that The Admiralty has endured in 30 years. To prepare for Hurricane Harvey, The Admiralty moved its soft goods to a storage room on the second level of the store and packed items in plastic bags like stuffed animals, socks, and T-shirts that might have been affected by moisture.

During Hurricane Ike in 2008 the store was closed for nine months and had 10 feet of water, which was three feet above the second level. “If we get seven feet of flooding, it’s safe, but if we get 8 feet of flooding it’s not safe,” she notes.

“Category 1, 2, 3, 4, you can have a whole host of problems with every one of those,” she says.

You can hear more about Morgan’s experience in preparing for and dealing with the aftermath of hurricanes, during the Coastal Connections Conference, Feb. 11-12, 2025, at the Margaritaville Resort Orlando. She’ll be participating on the panel discussion titled “Coming out of the Storm” and will be joined by other retailers who have gone through disasters along with expert advice from the insurance side of things. Learn more at www.coastalconnectionsconference.com.