Survival of the Fittest: how COVID-19 is affecting retail
In all my 30 years in retail, I have never seen anything as singularly destructive, disruptive and market-changing as COVID-19.
You don’t need me to tell you it’s a crisis on a truly global scale. Even though we’re now coming out of lockdown, countries across the world are still reeling from the containment measures that have forced businesses to shut their doors and lay off staff.
And retail, in many ways, has been hardest hit. Although grocery retail has been feeding the nations over the last few months, many high streets have been barren and shopping malls have been empty.
Now as customers begin to trickle back, retailers need to kickstart their cashflow and adapt to a significantly changed environment – whether that means driving store traffic with tempting promotions, giving confidence to shoppers to shop and store colleagues to work with new health and safety measures or investing in their online... Read more