'Pretty Catastrophic' Month for Retailers, and Now a Race to Survive

[Zorro]

Source: New York Times

Retail sales plunged in March, offering a grim snapshot of the coronavirus outbreak’s effect on consumer spending, as businesses shuttered from coast to coast and wary shoppers restricted their spending.

Total sales, which include retail purchases in stores and online as well as money spent at bars and restaurants, fell 8.7 percent from the previous month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. The decline was by far the largest in the nearly three decades the government has tracked the data.

Even that bleak figure doesn’t capture the full impact of the sudden economic freeze on the retail industry. Most states didn’t shut down nonessential businesses until late March or early April, meaning data for the current month could be worse still.

“It was a pretty catastrophic drop-off in that back half of the month,” said Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester Research. She said April “may be one of the worst months ever.”

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/business/economy/coronavirus-retail-sales.html

[underpants]

1. My wife commented last night: For those of us who've really stayed in

we are going to be shocked at how much is closed once we go back out.

[Lars39]

2. There's going to be lots of empty storefronts.

We had just bought a new-to-us dresser and chest of drawers (mid-century modern) from this pretty cool used furniture store.
Unless they have deep pockets, I'm betting they're not going to make it.

[House of Roberts]

3. This just shows how your business needs to be a WalMart or Target

so it can stay open as critical infrastructure and continue to sell groceries as well as whatever else is in the store.

[mpcamb]

6. Also show what a farce the $170 Billion giveaway to millionaires (81%) is to main street America.

[airmid]

4. My small home crafting and machine embroidery is dead. I have 67 cents

in my bank account and I don’t qualify for help. I gotta tell you that things look grim and I’ve no idea how to pull myself out of it.

[ret5hd]

5. I'm surprised it only fell 8.7 percent.

Grocery stores probably did good, but restaurants, bars, hairdressers, nail salons, boutique shops, every aspect of tourism related stuff, etc etc etc.

I really thought it would be much worse, and I strongly worry it will be a long downward trend for years, much like the Great Depression.

[Zorro]

7. This era may become known as The Great Disorder

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. It's the tRump Catastrophe. . . . nt

[PatrickforO]

10. Yeah, this will be a depression. No doubt.

On Trump's watch.

[PatrickforO]

9. I'm thinking a heck of a lot of things will change on the flip side of this thing.

Still working, and now getting ads for virtual national conferences.

I'm thinking the whole brick and mortar thing is going to take a huge hit.

Workforce will be more diffuse, and more office sharing arrangements will come to be, where an employer who has 300 people on board may have space for 100 and rotate them in and out with some working from home full time.

Changes for telemarketing to complete diffusion of labor force (all work from home, no boiler rooms except for scuzzy operations).

Huge increase in quality and much greater use of remote meeting technology like MS Teams and Zoom.

Retail stores will look different, and our transportation infrastructure will have increased automation. In fact, industries where labor is the primary cost center (think service industries such as financial and healthcare) will be increasingly automated. Many of the so-called lower-skilled jobs will also be automated, indeed were being automated before this happened.

Social ramifications too - more home gardens. In fact, more urban agriculture as a whole, even shared plots. That was already happening, but expect it to accelerate.

In addition, look for more extended families pooling resources and having multi-generational dwellings. The nuclear family hasn't ever really worked, and will become increasingly impossible to maintain in a new environment where we can expect a lower labor force participation rate.

Just a few thoughts...

[Zorro]

12. Sounds pretty reasonable to me

This pandemic will cause a tremendous social reset to our previous way of life. And with the onset of increased automation, the numbers of the unemployed will also increase; government needs to be thinking about how to manage this and the myriad of other conditions that will arise.

[cstanleytech]

11. Best way to cushion it would be for the government to tell everyone with monthly loans is that they

will be allowed to not pay them for 2 months without any requirement to repay the money.
As for the lenders they should be allowed to use the losses as a tax credit gradually over the next 5 years.

[progree]

13. I just read today that J C Penney will miss an interest payment (which is a default)

and Frontier Communications has filed for bankruptcy.