The global economy has been facing since last March one of the biggest crisis in the modern world history, COVID-19. With many companies and businesses forced to shut down or minimize their productivity, many governments had to put in place an emergency plan to save the economy and save as much jobs as possible. Was this the case for all sectors? Well the answer is NO.
Many businesses benefited from the corona crisis and in some cases couldn’t even cope with the market demand. In retail, the first necessity goods have been performing very well. Extremely well. Supermarkets and grocery stores were allowed to stay open when the majority of retail sector was locked. It’s very important to keep the food chain working even at the crisis times. All food ecosystems that includes retail, production, delivery and control has been performing better than last year’s performance. The fact that people are ordering from home has driven a high demand on digital work. Supermarkets and grocery stores that didn’t have an e-commerce platform were in rush to develop and deliver. The retail marketing budgets has moved from the traditional channels to digital and online visibility and promotions.
Health care is in the center of this pandemic. The sector has been facing the unexpected success and demand. From B2B products needed for hospitals and health care providers to personal products retailing. Masks, alcohol and gels are on the top list of the most sold SKUs during the 2020.
With more people not allowed to leave their homes, outdoor sport activities disappeared and replaced with more indoor activities. This has increased the demand from online sport retailers to deliver the basic products needed to exercise for both adults and kids. Light weights, Treadmills, sportswear are some of the key sold products during this period.
The consumer electronics products have been performing very well. Smart tablets have been out of stock from majority of brand manufacturers as schools switched the courses from physical classrooms to online courses where kids and students had to follow the courses on those devices. Smart TVs sales volumes and values has been increasing with double digits. The Smart TV penetration moved from 120% to 250% percent. Consumers are buying more than one smart TV per home as kids can be watching something while parents are watching something else on a different TV while in the pas most of families didn’t need more than one tv per home.
During the lockdown, people had a lot of free time, the online entertainment achieved very well during this pandemic. People are spending more time watching TV series and movies. Some of the entertainment companies has announced the biggest sales forecast of their history. Online education was one of the sectors that did well. Many people lost their jobs and had to get new skills through online training.
Work from home was new to many of us. This practice requires specific tools to keep the link with your work organization. With no possibility to attend physical professional meetings, the online meeting platforms were the only way for companies to substitute the physical presence and get the human look and feel through video conferencing systems. Those platforms offered both individual free accounts and corporate accounts that has made it easy to pass through the difficult months of lock down. Even after the lock down is lifted, many companies are still pushing their employees to work from home. Those tools will always stay with us in the coming future.
If you are considering to invest in a retail, the above sectors will always perform well despite the actual or future situations.
Stay safe.
(Global Retail TV Director)