A Small Business Owner's Guide to Getting Political

After Danielle Romanetti, the owner of Fibre Space in Alexandria, Virginia, hosted Kamala Harris’s visit in 2021, she saw a $30,000 windfall—and a surge in troll attacks. How she suggests dealing with attention, even if it’s negative.

Politicians dropping into local shops to chat with the owners and customers is a classic part of American politics. Just as predictable as the folksy photo ops is the backlash that often follows, when media outlets dissect the visit and members of the opposing party scrutinize the motivations of the shop owners.  

This campaign season, a video of Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s awkward visit to a donut shop in Valdosta, Georgia, went viral. Soon after, Democratic presidential candidate and current vice president Kamala Harris visited a Pittsburgh spice shop, sparking backlash following the shop owners’ critical comments about Republicans. So many negative posts appeared on Yelp that the platform temporarily suspended comments.  

Danielle Romanetti knows as well as anyone that a visit from a politician can be a boon for business—and a moment in the national spotlight. She experienced both when Vice President Harris visited her knitting store, Fibre Space, in Alexandria, Virginia’s historic district in 2021.  

In the days after Harris visited, Romanetti saw a $30,000 boost in sales, not to mention thousands of new followers. But when Fox News picked up on the story and mocked Harris as the country’s “crochet czar”—apparently making fun of both fiber arts as a hobby and Harris’s work securing the southern border—angry comments and racist attacks on Harris flooded the Fibre Space social media channels.  

Despite this animosity, Romanetti believes small-business owners absolutely should be vocal and involved in politics. “I’ve heard ‘just stick to yarn’ so many times, which is, first of all, such a misogynistic statement; if this wasn’t a female-dominated industry, what I’m doing would be considered art,” she says. “We should be listening to small-business owners more because we’re employing the middle class, I am employing service industry retail workers. Our restaurateurs are employing our working class. 

“It’s very acceptable for a mega-corporation to donate millions of dollars to a political campaign, but I’m supposed to be quiet and stick to yarn? It doesn’t make any sense at all,” she adds. 

After consulting with her employees, she decided to “mock back” and turn the negative attention “into something good.” Fibre Space began selling an enamel pin featuring an illustration of Harris and the words “crochet czar.” Proceeds went to a local women’s shelter. Now that Harris is the Democratic candidate for president, Fibre Space is offering a new “crochet czar” pin designed by local artist Shelli Can, whose space-age knitting murals adorn Fibre Space’s façade.  

Today, Fibre Space does a little over $1.5 million in annual revenue, employing six people full time and several freelance designers and teachers. In early September, Inc. visited Romanetti in her Alexandria shop to discuss why small businesses should get involved in politics and how to deal with the attention that can follow a high-profile visit. Here’s what she wants other business owners to know. 

Although Fibre Space is located just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., Romanetti’s first foray into politics was decidedly local. She opened the brick-and-mortar Fibre Space store in 2009, and when it became clear that her customers were having trouble finding parking spots near her business, she petitioned the city to install parking meters and impose time limits on the parking spots on commercial streets.  

From there, she gradually became more involved with issues that matter to her business and customers. “I never had any hesitation in getting involved in local politics,” she says. “I would put out calls for my customers to show up to a parking and traffic board meeting and testify. They loved that I was involved locally.” 

Making the transition to speaking out on national issues was a bit more intimidating, Romanetti admits. As she thinks through which causes to be vocal about, she continues to focus on issues that are important to her as a business owner and her employees and customers. “It should be a good match for your business, the way you operate, and what your customers already know about you,” she says. 

Several years ago, Fibre Space hosted an event with Planned Parenthood and state politicians in support of a federal program to help women access long-lasting birth control — something that’s important to her as a mother and entrepreneur and to her employees, who are mostly women. “I spoke about why women who want to start businesses need to have control over when they reproduce, and how relevant that is to the small-business community,” she says. 

The decision to host Harris to speak about the administration’s Covid-relief plans also stemmed from her experience as a small-business owner navigating the pandemic. In 2020, Fibre Space switched to e-commerce overnight and held video appointments with customers while its retail workers waited for vaccines to become available.  

If a conservative customer questioned Romanetti’s decision to host Harris, she would explain to the customer what was in the Covid relief bill Harris was proposing as well as “why that is so critical to this business that you love, that you want to stay in business,” she says. 

Romanetti believes that part of the reason her store’s turn in the political spotlight drew so much attention is because she’s running a unique business, which can be both a blessing and a curse. Media outlets are more likely to pick up on stories when they involve businesses with unusual business models, like her quirky knitting shop. “They want unique things they can talk about or they can yell about,” she says. A politics-themed bar called Pattie’s in Washington, D.C., learned this the hard way when it faced online backlash for including a small illustration of an elephant, a symbol of the Republican party, on its sign. (The business later painted over the elephant as well as a depiction of the Democratic donkey.) 

Romanetti emphasizes that most of the response to Harris’s visit was positive, but wading into a politically charged issue did bring out critics and trolls. For several days, she manually deleted racist comments, and blocked accounts on Fibre Space’s social media pages, taking on the work herself so her employees would not have to see the offensive messages.  

“I view those spaces as community spaces for our customers,” she says. “It’s just stressful work for a business owner to have to monitor the social media accounts and delete the stuff that’s horrible and racist and hate-filled.” Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram allow users to automatically block comments and messages that contain certain words or phrases, she says, which can make that work easier. 

Fibre Space employees have been instructed to forward any interview requests to her, including if journalists show up to the store in person. “I’ve seen too many business owners get caught up with something that an employee said that wasn’t reflective of what [the owner] would have said, because a reporter needed a sound bite in that moment and was really pushy about it,” says Romanetti.  

The morning of Inc.’s visit (which was arranged in advance by email), Romanetti participated in a press conference about Harris’s proposed small-business plan, which would expand the tax credit for small-business owners from $5,000 to up to $50,000. Before agreeing to take part, she checked in with her employees. “I said, ‘I’m the only one who’s going to be on camera, but here’s what’s happening. Here’s where it’s going out. Is everybody OK with that?’” she says. 

Although the “crochet czar” pins are intended to signal support for Harris, Romanetti and her employees decided that the proceeds from both editions should go to a local women’s shelter, rather than the campaign. “I’m trying to create an environment where all of my customers feel comfortable, even my super conservative customers,” she says. “It’s important that I’m not doing things that are so in their face.”