Six months have passed since lockdown measures were put in place to stop the spread of the coronavirus, causing sales for the fashion and retail industries to plunge as stores closed for months on end. Come September, the majority of stores will have reopened, albeit with a slew of new safety measures in place and significantly lowered foot traffic.
Here are five of the biggest shifts in the fashion retail landscape we’ve seen in the age of coronavirus.
This month, Boston Consulting Group reported that fashion retailer sales will be down as much as 35 percent in 2020 compared with last year, and that luxury stores will see sales drop as much as 45 percent. Businesses that had minimal or no e-commerce operations were hardest hit as the pandemic fueled a rapid shift to online shopping in key markets like Britain, France and America.
In fact, fashion’s worst quarter ever was also its best for online sales. Prada’s online sales doubled. Bottega Veneta’s tripled. And Farfetch, the digital marketplace that allows upmarket vendors to sell their goods online, reported last month that it had seen a 60 percent surge in traffic for the second quarter compared with the same period last year — and 500,000 new customers.