The dryer isn’t working! These are the words that set off a chain of events that would conclude with 19 hours on the phone with Lowe’s and countless more companies researching why their processes were so far behind today’s standards. The entire ordeal reminded me of a scene from the 90’s sitcom Home Improvement, starring Tim Allen as Tim “The Toolman” Taylor. As a dad that tried to fix home issues on his own, he’d occasionally run into dangerous scenarios and electrical wiring often took center stage. Here’s but one example.
Those numbers couldn’t be correct. A month before job losses in the United States surpassed 10 million in two weeks, figures were leaking out of China. In eCommerce and retail, China has served as a leading indicator of sorts, but on February 15th, we couldn’t have imagined the news that would come at the end of the following month. A colleague at Alibaba mentioned that the news would later report a job loss number of catastrophic proportions: six million in the month of February. I didn’t believe it so I disregarded the estimates. I was wrong to do so.
Long before retail was impacted by social distancing, the American mall was fighting for survival. Early signs of this were everywhere: perpetual discounting and promotion, insufficient staffing, stale inventory, and outdated storefronts. A number of these retailers are highly-leveraged assets, a culprit even a junior financial analyst could identify. As a result, a deluge of layoffs and closures began within two weeks of foot traffic falling. What will a healthy retail ecosystem look like when normalcy returns?
