Physical retail was already in crisis long be-fore Covid-19 struck, fuelled by changing shopping habits and the rise of online in par-ticular. Since the lockdown, overall retail sales plummeted by a record 18.1% in April after a 5.2% fall in March according to the Office for National Statistics. Conversely, the proportion of retail sales spent online rose to a record 30.7% in April compared with 19.1% in April 2019. Now, non-food retailers emerging from the shut-down must add to that social distanc-ing, one-way systems, entry and queuing out-side and more. And then there's back-of-house stockroom and loading procedures. So what's the future for this struggling sector? 'A lot of innovation is needed in retail as an industry. I wouldn't be surprised if inter-esting things come out of Covid-19 in terms of selling across different platforms, and dif-ferent experiences of shopping,' says Fiona Scott, co-author of the new GLA report High Streets and Town Centres: Adaptive Strate-gies, produced as part of the mayor of Lon-don's Good Growth by Design programme.
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