Retail is in crisis, the pandemic is bringing businesses to their knees. But everywhere there are providers who can survive any crisis. How do you do that? Five survivors.
First the corner shop disappeared, then branches of large retail chains displaced the long-established traditional shops. Discount stores opened in the pedestrian zones and on the outskirts. The corona crisis has dealt another blow to the retail sector: some city centers have not recovered from the lockdown, and many department stores and small businesses have given up.
Nevertheless, German citizens consume no less than they used to. On the contrary: since 2009, the year of the financial crisis, retail sales have risen continuously. Even the pandemic is unlikely to change that in the long term. Even if the food retail trade and specialty stores such as hardware stores and bicycle shops made significantly more sales in the meantime and at the same time the shops in the city centers had to cope with losses: Overall, the retail sector has already reached pre-pandemic level again.
However, purchasing behavior has changed. More and more people are ordering goods on the Internet and having them delivered to their homes. This trend is older than the pandemic, but the crisis has exacerbated it. Between the years 2000 and 2020, online sales rose from 1.3 billion to almost 73 billion euros, and the trend is rising. These billions are lost to stationary retail. So the fear remains: every fourth store could soon disappear from the cityscape.
A recent Yougov survey shows that most Germans still want to go into business. They appreciate the haptic impression when examining the goods, they want to touch objects and try them out. And they see shopping as an experience, as a form of encounter. It is therefore no coincidence that businesses that defy any crisis usually pursue a special idea and have built a very special relationship with their customers.