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THE WEEK IN RETAIL ISSUE 24
EDITOR’S COMMENT
SECOND WAVE WILL SHOW WHETHER SUPPLIERS’ ATTITUDES HAVE CHANGED
With a second wave of Covid now looking like a racing certainty, it will be fascinating to see how the major suppliers react if the much anticipated second wave of panic buying materialises. The supermarkets are already putting buying restrictions in place on bog roll and pasta, so it’s probably fair to say they’re expecting a repeat of the mad dash to grab everything in the store.
What will be really interesting to watch is how the suppliers react if and when the supply chain comes under that sort of pressure again. Hopefully the entire supply chain has learned a thing or two over the past six or seven months but there’s still a fighting chance that the wheels could come off again – so what will the suppliers do? How many of them will prioritise supplies to the big boys?
Dawood Pervez’s opinion piece in this issue discusses exactly this topic and urges supplies not to ‘short’ independents and points out, quite rightly, that it was independents who got most UK communities through lockdown. Dawood’s piece reminds me of another opinion piece we carried a while back from NFRN COO Greg Deacon who bluntly challenged suppliers to recognise what was going on around them, recognise the huge growth in the convenience channel and recognise the heroic role that local retailers have played under lockdown.
He also mused in that piece about whether most suppliers would just go back to their old ‘supermarkets first’ ways in future, but expressed hope that at least some would shift more of their focus and energy into the vital independent channel. The way things are going at the moment, it looks like we might start to find out the answers to some of these critically important questions if a second wave piles pressure back onto suppliers.
