How the Pandemic Helped Fix Retail - The Journal. - WSJ Podcasts

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Suzanne Kapner: They were running out of cash. They had to raise extra money. They had to close all their stores. Macy's recorded a billion dollar loss. Things were really pretty dark at the beginning. It was unlike anything these executives had ever had to go through before. And it really raised a lot of questions about who was going to survive this. And you had a lot of the weaker players going into bankruptcy as a result.

Suzanne Kapner: There were just hundreds and thousands of store closures across the industry. It was sort of unprecedented. And people were calling it the retail apocalypse. It looked pretty ugly. Suzanne Kapner: Certainly a lot of people were talking about that, the end of stores, we don't need stores anymore. You would think all these problems would really be sort of the death knell for the retail industry. But in fact, the pandemic provided some silver linings that helped retailers really rebound in a much stronger position than a lot of people expected.

Suzanne Kapner: The supply chain problems did something that the retailers themselves were unable to do for years. It took all that excess inventory out of the system. And because retailers couldn't get the goods and a lot of them did slash their orders because demand went down so much during last year, all of a sudden all that excess inventory wasn't there anymore. That is such a 180 from where we were two years ago. It's kind of hard to overstate what a big change that is.

Suzanne Kapner: They're trying to rethink the store. A lot of times it's smaller. It offers kind of more interactive features beyond just buying. Levi Strauss has a tailor shop in its store where customers can customize their jeans. They can add color rivets or embroidery. It's this whole idea of you want the store to tell the story of your brand and you want to somehow engage with the shopper in that store beyond just selling them something.

Suzanne Kapner: People really did return to physical stores in sizeable numbers. Obviously, last year there was really very little in-store shopping on Black Friday. And the numbers are sort of misleading now just to look at the Black Friday weekend because retailers have been spreading these Black Friday deals throughout the month of November. One, because of these supply chain shortages, people have sort of been shopping earlier, making sure they can get the goods.

SuzanneKapner

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