Krystal Glowatski and Malia Brackpool, co-owners of CollabArtive Studios in downtown Weyburn, have shortened their retail hours to ensure they can maintain a strong work-life balance.

"We decided, going into summer, that we were going to switch our hours from what we used to be open from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and now we're open from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. [Tuesday to Saturday]," Glowatski said.

She said sometimes they're facilitating classes and other events from 9:30 a.m. until 10:30 p.m., and with no staff, as business owners the retail hours presented challenges.

"It just makes it so much more doable for us, to make our business really last long term, if we are able to have just those smaller public hours, a shorter time frame," she noted. "But really, we are getting a huge influx of private bookings. People are having Bachelorette parties at 7:00 p.m., they're having birthday parties at 10:00 a.m. they're having family reunions on Sundays, and so this allows us to open up our booking schedule a lot wider if we have shorter public hours."

"There's definitely certainly other businesses that offer services and things like that, but I think that we bring a little bit of something different in terms of all the breadth of events that we do and how much we tailor our events to the particular like for groups who are booking," Glowatski pointed out, adding, "we're able to showcase local talent and we love being able to do that." 

"What we are about is our events more than our products. Of course, we have beautiful handmade items in here from all sorts of local makers, ourselves included, and we invite you guys to come in and shop those between 1:00 and 5:00 Tuesday through Saturday, but realistically, our biggest groups that are coming through our doors are for our private events."

She said they actually make a good portion of their retail sales during those private events.

"So being able to limit our public hours a little bit more really helps us in all aspects of our business model. We can work seven days a week and not burn ourselves out, essentially."

"One of the biggest things that Malia and I agreed upon when we started this business was the need for a work-life balance. With her family, me coming from an academic background where I was working seven days a week, 365 days a year. I mean, even on Christmas Day, I was editing journal articles to get in for peer review journals and things like that. And so we really wanted to try to strike that balance and find that balance, and this is part of our venture in doing that."