Revolutionizing Retail: E-commerce Strategies in the Wake of Covid-19

Retail Evolution Amidst Covid-19: SRT Sept/Oct 2020

As the world continues to awaken from retail hibernation due to Covid-19 what has become obvious is that alternative ways of doing business are becoming more mainstream. Prior to March of this year not many would have even thought of “curb-side pickup” as an option. Today it’s a perfectly acceptable form of delivery if it makes the customer feel more secure.

Shifting from Print to Digital

Many retailers have been migrating their messaging from print to social media quite effectively for some time through the likes of Facebook Instagram and email blasts. Though e-commerce has been around as long as the internet not every independent retailer was convinced of its rightful place as a selling option until recently. Indeed most stores had a website of some sort even if it was only a static informational site. The economic shutdown earlier this year forced retailers to reconsider their internet presence. Stores that had shopping carts redesigned them and stores that didn’t rushed to develop them.

Retailers’ E-commerce Journeys

I asked three retailers who all have different levels of internet experience to share their stories of how and why their e-com business came to be.

Rick Ravel’s Experience

Rick Ravel owner of Austin-based Karavel Shoes put it this way:

“On March 24 2020 the City of Austin shut down all retail stores. We laid off most of the staff. One of our buyers suggested that we update our website to include e-commerce. During a two-week layoff period we put together an e-commerce site using Shopify as our web host. The site became operational on April 9th. Prior to this time we had resisted having e-commerce due to cost in both time and money to build and maintain personnel to manage the site and having sufficient inventory to satisfy expected demand.”

Vendor Retailer’s Meeting Insights

While at a vendor retailer’s meeting we heard speakers who were helping retailers put together e-commerce sites and explaining the reasons for why to do it now. We decided it was time to develop our site but our brick and mortar sales growth kept us from proceeding. When the Pandemic hit everything fell into place. Karavelshoes.com is now up and running. Most of our sales are coming from our own customers. We have not marketed the site outside our own customer base but that is the next step in our marketing plan.

Insights from Mallory Dabney Owner of Heyday in Bozeman MT

“Watching our e-commerce business evolve over the past few years has been very rewarding. During the COVID shutdown I found myself grateful that we had put in the time to build our online store when we had. Heydaybozeman.com was created as our marketing efforts were a dead end for the customer experience – we’d send an email and you couldn’t click-thru to transact our Facebook posts were inspiring and beautiful but the experience ended with the photo. It was a missed opportunity. Additionally Bozeman was becoming a growing tourist destination. We often heard our customers asking how they could continue to shop with us from home.

Initial Challenges and Growth

Initially the online store was an after-thought to our brick and mortar store. We didn’t give it much consideration when making buys. Sales generated from the online store were considered a bonus. It wasn’t until we invested in Facebook advertising that we began to notice a shift.

June 2019: Hiring an e-Commerce Manager

In June of 2019 we hired a full-time e-Commerce Manager since we were seeing the percentage of online sales continue to grow. With growth there are challenges. Staffing fulfillment and inventory management were all systems that were heavily taxed due to the overwhelming surge of online activity during the shutdown. Our online volume was up an average of 300% over online LY. We see a huge potential for the online segment of our business. Moving forward we will better manage our online inventory and treat it as a separate location for allocation and buying.

Todd Mason’s Insights

Todd Mason owner of Town & Country Shoe Outlet in Lancaster KY wrote…

Impact of the Shutdown

“Kentucky shut down all non-essential retailers in late March and reopened on May 20 with two months of lost revenue in walk-in sales. Fortunately we had begun our website (www.townandcountryshoeoutlet.com) development on Shopify in Q3 of 2019 with completion in Q4. It was quite labor intensive but we were looking for much more than a static page and felt the time investment would be worthwhile to take advantage of the integration between RICS and Shopify.

The Unexpected Storm

We had no idea of the storm ahead nor how the website would likely save our business. With the combination of good SEO content for organic search and a solid ecommerce agency that has focused on Google Shopping we captured 20% of our PY month sales in April then 30% in May. While many of the items sold were discounted it greatly helped cash flow during these tough times and has proven to be a great outlet for moving sale items quickly. Clearly these were incremental sales as the majority were shipped out of state! During the pandemic we focused on everyone in quarantine and walking and running footwear proved to be the big winners. We have every indication that the online trend will continue throughout the year and are projecting a 25-30% increase in top-line sales.”

Online Shopping Trends

Online shopping has grown from about 1% in 2000 to what could be close to 18% in 2020 according to EMarketer’s recent forecast on U.S. Retail Sales. Clearly Covid-19 has changed the way people shop. “Brick and mortar retail sales are expected to drop by 14% and may take up to five years to return to pre-pandemic levels. Amazon leads the way in online sales grabbing a 38% share of the market followed by Walmart at 5.8% and eBay at 4.5%.”

Impact on Physical Stores

According to recent data compiled by Coresight permanent store closures are estimated to reach as high as 25000 in 2020. If that seems like a misprint it’s not. Perhaps even some of those reading this article may not be able to overcome the financial hardship heaped upon the retail community by the Covid pandemic. Those that do survive have discovered ways to reinvent themselves similar to the stores showcased above. Survival is the true essence of entrepreneurship that endures in the blood of the independent retailer. For those that did weather the storm and lived to sell another day there is no place to go but up.

Ritchie Sayner

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