Retailers are allowed to reopen their doors on Monday – subject to strict measures. According to experts, a discount battle is to be expected.
After the trade had to close for six weeks, shopping will start again on Monday – with stricter measures. As already reported, there are 2-meter distance rules and an FFP2 mask requirement. In addition, only one customer is allowed to be in the shop per 20 square meters of sales area.
WKÖ trade chairman Rainer Trefelik and trade association manager Rainer Will are expecting some “massive discounts”, reports the “APA”. Many traders have already complained that (winter) goods are piling up in the shops, but that new goods are still being delivered. Now space has to be created here for new seasonal goods.
Therefore, a discount battle is expected especially in the fashion, shoe and sporting goods trade.
According to data from Statistics Austria, this is after all the area of trade that suffered the most in the Corona year 2020. In the clothing and shoe trade, the corona crisis hit particularly hard with real sales declines averaging more than a fifth (22.4 percent). (More on this here >>)
As in the “Today ” conversation, Trefelik predicted discounts, especially in fashion and electronics stores. “The warehouses are overflowing, the season is almost over – these areas will not work without discounts.” He described that, among other things, the fashion sector is going under in goods. Many retailers would now have to sell parts of their product range at high discounts after the week-long lockdown in order to wash money back into the tills.
Despite the opening, however, the managing director of the trade association, Will, expects losses. He expects high discounts, but because of the lower customer footfall due to hygiene measures, retailers would lose between 250 and 300 million euros in sales per week from next week.
In addition, Will expressed concern about the mutation spreading in Austria:
“If we had to close again after a short time, it would be a double catastrophe,” said Will.
What about the feared waves of bankruptcies? Whether and how big a possible bankruptcy wave could turn out is still difficult to answer at the moment, according to trade expert at KMU Research Austria, Wolfgang Ziniel. Before the crisis, around a third of retailers recorded a loss, which of course will now increase significantly, explained Ziniel: “Developments that began before Corona will now come to a particularly acute point.”
