Five things retailers should plan for in 2021
Looking back on 2020 and speaking to numerous retail leaders, there’s no question that retail covered five years of strategic planning in a year. Retailers have lived and died by their e-commerce models, agile supply chains and more flexible delivery models. My biggest observation was that the speed of change curtailed the amount of time retailers had to respond to the competition let alone the situation. In normal times, copy-cat services and introducing new ways of shopping would have been finely tuned, but no one had that luxury. The consequence was that several large retailers went into administration and many well-known brands left the high street. If you couldn’t keep up you really were left behind. Much of this is related to the store to head office feedback loops that management teams rely on. Retailers need the ‘frontline’ to help assess performance and gauge the success of offers and marketing – word of mouth from store teams and customers is helpful to apply to statistics. But it simply hasn’t been possible or practical and it’s been telling as to which had the best models to adapt, be agile and perform. Of course, online retailers were quick to swing into action...
