Retail Management Best Practices
UK Shoppers Returned To High Streets In July But Not In Enough Numbers To Save UK Jobs
Clothes and household goods instore sales remained below prepandemic levels but the switch to online retailing more than made up for lost retail business activity. Food sales remained strong boosted by extra online delivery slots. Online retail sales jumped again including clothes sales and homes and interiors goods.
Overall UK retail sales have now rebounded fully to prepandemic levels. This has been supported by reopening of non food High Street shops but High Street shop sales have not recovered. As a result retail sales jobs have been lost perhaps in the 50000 numbers. Online retail sales are at historically high levels.
The retail industry is important to the overall health of the UK economy. More than 5 percent of UK economic growth comes from retail sales. The return of retail sales is important to the recovery of the UK economy. The loss of some many retail jobs will not only hurt the families affected it will hurt the UK economy as these jobs are unlikely to return as the retail industry restructuring has been sped up by at least a decade to the dominance of online retailing.
As people have more reasons to buy new clothes UK clothing sales should bounce back further. Household goods and DIY have already bounced back strongly as people do up their pandemic bubbles.
The UK government should not ride to the financial rescue of High Street retailers to save jobs that are already lost to the restructuring of how UK consumers buy stuff. Such monetary support would be wasted as it will not shore up the inevitable retail job losses from the High Street. The High Street will need to reinvent itself but it is unlikely to do so strongly until a vaccine is found. A vaccine is unlikely to be freely available until early 2021 at earliest. That is when the High Street will need some TLC. Not only will shops disappear so will the likes of even more bank branches leaving big holes on UK High Streets. The holes will need to be filled with a combination of housing and lifestyle experiences along with small shops and pickup points to pick up your online retail orders.