Retail was one of the hardest hit sectors of the pandemic and the high street has been particularly ravaged. With household names disappearing one after the other over the past few months, WaveTrackR’s Emily Buckley investigates whether the high street can survive, if online retail will continue to boom and what this means for jobs in the sector.
It’s been a tough year for the high street. With non-essential shops forced to shut several times and for significant periods since March 2020, many businesses have struggled. Record numbers of small businesses have permanently closed their doors since the beginning of the first lockdown but they are by no means alone. With the buy-out of the Arcadia Group’s brands and Debenhams by major online retail brands earlier this year, plus the closure of several John Lewis and House of Fraser stores and the permanent exit of familiar brands such as Laura Ashley, Warehouse, Oasis and Jaeger, it seemed that one after the other of the UK’s high street icons were disappearing. What does this mean for the future of the high street and retail jobs? Will retail move online at a greater rate? Will the job market reflect that?
The reality is that the high street was struggling long before covid-19 hit. The pandemic and resulting lockdowns simply accelerated a trend towards online shopping that had been growing momentum for some years. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) reported in January that sales of non-food items from high street stores fell by 24% from 2019 in 2020 and overall UK retail sales suffered the biggest decline since records began in 1995. With the closure of shops, retail jobs suffered greatly and the figures make for grim reading. WaveTrackR’s Recruitment Trends: Lockdown Report found that jobs in retail were down by a colossal 573% in the final three months of 2020 compared to the first three months of the year.
The report highlighted the fact that jobs simply fell away from March, rising slightly in October but falling again with the second lockdown. November and December, usually an incredibly busy time for retail with Christmas shopping boosting jobs for seasonal workers, felt particularly flat. The second lockdown, swiftly followed by the tiered system forcing the closure of shops yet again in some parts of the UK, meant many shops lost key Christmas business. Although there has been a boost in sales since non-essential shops were permitted to reopen in April of this year, with clothing retailers the biggest winners from the pent-up demand of consumers, the BRC stated that during that month 530,000 people who work in retail remained on furlough. It seems likely that further job losses will be seen when the scheme ends in September.
City centres suffered the most in 2020, with shoppers avoiding historically crowded areas. A report on retail trends by Retail Economics found that footfall over the summer months in city centres fell to around half of the levels seen over the same period in 2019. Whether higher levels of footfall in our city centres will ever return remains uncertain and further big name closures have been announced to reflect this. H&M has announced that it will close 250 stores globally and Aspinal of London is set to close all of its physical stores, permanently moving the brand online.
Aspinal’s move reflects a growing trend to focus on digital sales.Those shops that pivoted to online sales in 2020, even temporarily, fared better than those without an online presence. Those that strengthened their online offering and connected with rapidly changing consumer needs performed better still. But it was the brands that had picked up on the prevailing mood for digital shopping years ago and had designed their online offering to reflect what customers really wanted that positively boomed. Data from the UK’s online retail association, IMRG, revealed that online sales grew by 36% in 2020 – the highest growth in 13 years. Interestingly, however, the brands that drove up the figures were those with both physical and online stores, further suggesting that if high street retail simultaneously improves its online experience it can survive. A key trend in 2021 is the evolving fusion of physical and digital stores, with physical stores becoming more of a customer experience platform.
Alongside this there is much talk of a rise of independent shops taking the place of vanishing chain stores, of local retailers reclaiming their high streets amidst vacant shops and falling rents. As the chain retailers have gradually edged away from the high street to online sales, average high street and shopping centre rates have dropped, falling significantly in 2020 according to Statista. This is paving the way for independents who are also capitalising on a wave of support for local businesses begun during 2020 lockdowns. An increase in independents combined with stores that focus on the customer journey could lead to a rise in destination shopping, bringing shoppers to areas for an experience that surpasses traditional chain store shopping.
So what state is the retail sector in now? By mid-February 2021, 27,096 jobs had been lost since the start of the year and 1023 stores planned for closure, according to analysis from the Centre for Retail Research. 850 retails jobs had been lost each day of 2021 until that point. In all, nearly 190,000 retail jobs have been lost since the start of the first lockdown in 2020 to April 2021. With non-essential shops having reopened on April 12th as planned, the hope is that the job loss rate will be stemmed.
However, the continued popularity of online shopping will likely mean that retail brands need to diversify to survive, offering multiple channels for consumers ready to spend. That will mean a rise in digital roles such as software engineers and developers, plus online and social media marketing positions, within the retail sector. Retail assistants will still be needed, perhaps even more so as a first class retail assistant that can offer advice and add to the shopping experience is one of the largest differentiators between physical and online stores.
The future for the high street is unpredictable but, following an undeniably disastrous year for the sector, the good news is that sales are picking up. It is an industry that will need to pivot to survive, as will its employees, and recruiters can help candidates do just that.
WaveTrackR is an intelligent multi-posting tool, data analytics platform and candidate management system. It will advise you when, where and what to post, boost your recruitment power online and increase your ROI.
