Discussing strategies to overcome the COVID-19 crisis which has impacted the retail sector heavily, realty experts stated that commercial segment will get impacted in the short term, but in long term things will surely come back to normal. The experts spoke at a webinar ‘COVID 19 – Retail Tales’,organised by ICCPL and Realty & More recently.
“Post COVID-19, organised retail will be preferred against the local shopping areas, which are crowded. Earlier, people went to next-door markets, but now things will change as people will look for places that are more hygienic. This is where malls and organised retail centres come into picture,” said Mohit Goel, CEO, Omaxe Ltd.
Malls have been known to rely on events to increase footfalls, but now with the social distancing norm, the situation might pan out differently.
“Our focus now is how to make shoppers visiting the malls safe. The sooner shopping malls can manage this, the better it will be for their business. Malls have the wherewithal to control safety aspects like number of people entering and sanitisation, etc. It is this controlled environment that builds confidence for the customer,” said Abhishek Bansal, Executive Director, Pacific Group.
The realtors also talked sanitation of trial room facility at apparel stores, which form a large part of a mall. Brands will have to put the tried clothes back on the display only after sanitising and dry cleaning them. However, it is premature to talk about it as brands are still working on this aspect,they said
“This pandemic is not a long term scenario. Maybe we have been pushed by, say two years, but these retail projections are for long term and I don’t see hindrance in growth of organised retail segment,” said Harshvardhan Rathore, Head of Retail (West), Saville India.