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With tanking sales and numerous stores shutting down for good, the pandemic has been unforgiving to the retail sector.
Experts predicted things to get much worse but thankfully they did not. In fact, a whole new tribe of retail stores seem to be emerging leaner and fitter through the storm.
Early To Rise
The freeze-all lockdowns forced many retailers to lose inertia and finally adopt technology, provide faster deliveries, and improve customer connectivity - stuff they had been delaying for years.
Moreover, they had to find a way to thrive on a stage with a fixed backdrop of e-commerce giants like Flipkart and Amazon.
Pre Workout Preps
Retailers who didn't perish created an 'omnichannel', nothing intergalactic, in simple words they connected their brick and mortar stores and warehouses to the internet.
Although some retailers had such a system in place earlier, it was either gathering bad sectors on server hard drives or never deployed on this scale.
Shedding Weight
British departmental store chain, Marks & Spencer, which had been performing poorly for years used the pandemic to shut down ailing stores and divert resources to online activities instead.
This led to the chain recording huge profits in a long time.
Sustaining The Gains With Technology
In times to come, we can expect more retailers to push for integration of ecommerce with their locations.
Stores across China and the US are adopting easy to use software to serve customers in a number of ways. For instance, in-store employees can now video chat, share pictures and product information online with customers - increasing trust and making big sales.