By Hannah Sabo
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Stacey Barich, owner of Atomic Cheesecake Studios in Parkville, is one of the many small businesses in Maryland affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a photographer, much of Barich’s business relies on clients’ appointments. Before coronavirus, she had an average of five clients a week with portrait packages ranging from $500 to $2,000. Those photos were creatively inserted into calendars and booklets or stood alone as personal portraits.
Today, things are different.
“My sales are down by nearly 90%,” Barich told The Baltimore Watchdog. “I’ve only managed to rearrange my schedule by seeing a select, few clients on a day-to-day basis, playing it by ear the whole way.”
Social distancing measures ordered by President Donald Trump and Gov. Larry Hogan are partly to blame for Barich’s “new normal” of operation. Barich says she can’t have more than one client at a time in her place of business and must make absolutely certain that they’ve adhered to quarantining if she agrees to see them at all.
Initially, Barich agreed to see three clients in the first week of social distancing, but now has stopped seeing all clientele.
“I’ve had to spread out and cancel most of my appointments,” she says. “I do a lot of customized calendars for clients, and these usually require a group-shoot.”
So over the weeks that COVID-19 has stalked residents in Maryland and the rest of the United States and shuttered businesses and schools, Barich has sorrowfully watched her upwards of $10,000 a month income dwindle to $3,000 since the start of quarantine.
To make matters worse, the promises of the federal Paycheck Protection Program, an extension of the Care Act, bypassed her studio and went to wealthier shops like Shake Shack, which has hundreds of locations and recently agreed to return $10 million to the federal program. Atomic Cheesecake Studios, like the 477,233 other Maryland small businesses, have not seen a penny of its support but hope to receive some help in the second round of stimulus payments.
Barich says her business has never faced troubling times like it is now with the current COVID-19 pandemic at hand.
But Barich clings to the happier days of her youth growing up in Glen Bernie when the business was merely a dream.
“Growing up on my street was practically like living with my whole family,” she says. “All of my neighbors were aunts and uncles, making free time more fun with my cousins’ company.”
First, Barich attended the Community College of Baltimore County with a focus on digital publishing and photography.
“I was in my second year of studies when I had come to a realization that I wasn’t getting what I wanted out of the experience,” she says. “So, I quit!”
It wasn’t long after she left college that she met Frank Barich, who is now her husband. Frank worked at Comcast, a stable job he’s held for more than 20 years. As a driven couple, the two purchased their first house together before they both turned 25.
Stacey worked for the well-known company, Agora in Mount Vernon.
“I actually started in an entry-level position in their call-center,” Barich says. “It was super disorganized, so I created a manual and dispersed it to all of [the] coworkers.”
With this project completed, she caught the attention of her supervisor. From that moment on, Barich received a series of promotions until she was running the Telecom Department where she had started.
Shortly after her first promotion, Barich was pregnant with her first child, Logan. All was well, and her career was on track.
But after 10 years, Barich says she needed a change of pace.
“I loved my job at Agora,” she says. “I loved the people I worked with, and we got a lot done. But I’ve always had a passion for the creativity that photography allows and in the beginning that was what I’d always wanted to do.”
Barich says she had reached a point of financial security with her job and that allowed her to feel confident enough to bite the bullet and start her own business.
Atomic Cheesecake Studios opened in 2006.
“I came up with my company’s name because I mainly do pin-up photography, and vintage-themed photography,” Barich says. “Atomic represents the ‘Atomic Era’ that I reflect upon, and in the ‘50s, “cheesecake photography,” was a socially acceptable way of referring to pinup photos. So, voila! I came up with Atomic Cheesecake Studios.”
The majority of Barich’s customers come looking for a unique way to express their interest in retro fashions and the quirky themes that she comes up with have captured customers’ interest in investing more time into her business.
“I’d like to say I earned my stripes,” she says. “But the matter of fact is, I didn’t have to work too hard to gather in clients! That’s not to say I don’t advertise my butt off, but a lot of my former clients at Agora were interested in what I newly had to offer.”
Barich says that the most difficult thing in her current career is coming up with photoshoot ideas.
To stay afloat today, Barich says she has created photo-packages for clients to select that can be done after quarantine is over. She requires a deposit to ensure the client’s appointment.
Barich is keenly aware that hundreds of businesses throughout Maryland have had to close due to the lack of financial support.
“I’ve luckily been able to hang on by a thread to avoid completely closing,” she says. “My business is adaptable in the sense that I can control when I can see clients and ensure that if a client wants to book a shoot, they have to put down a deposit.”
Barich, like many small business owners in Maryland, says she is hoping to see the federal aid they’ve been promised sooner rather than later.