1 minute read
THE WEEK IN RETAIL ISSUE 37
EDITOR’S COMMENT
AS YOU WERE...
After all the mild euphoria of December with its vaccine-fuelled promise of a better 2021, it didn’t take long for reality to bite as the whole of the UK slipped back into full lockdown with only a few days of the new year under our belts. Rising, record numbers of cases and an ominous new strain of the virus means we’re not even back where we started – we’re in worse shape than ever. Nicola Sturgeon says she’s more concerned now than she was during the original lockdown last March.
Throw into the equation Boris’s last-minute post-Brexit deal crammed full of concessions and all the derring-do bluster in the world can’t disguise the fact that 2021 already has the hallmarks of another annus horribilis.
Anybody who says they’ve both read and understood the 1,200+ page post-Brexit trade agreement has either not read it or not understood it – so there is a long, long way to go before we start getting any decent clarity on what sorts of impacts it will have on the local retailing sector.
Efficient business operation relies on efficient planning but to plan efficiently you need to have some idea of what you’re planning for. You need to have narrowed down the likely scenarios to at least a manageable shortlist – but that’s simply not possible when Brexit and full lockdown collide and we’ve almost literally no idea what’s coming down the track in the next few days and weeks, never mind the next six, 12 or 24 months.
If a company as big, rich and high-powered as Sainsbury’s finds itself having to list Spar own-label products to make up for availability shortfalls, you know there’s a problem.
To coin an infuriating phrase however, we are where we are – and local retailing has proven itself over the last year to be among the most flexible, proactive, responsive and creative sectors of all when it comes to dealing with the realities of our transformed world.
Unfortunately, it looks like we’re going to need a lot more of the same in 2021. May the force be with you, my friends.
