Impact Of COVID-19 Epidemic On Retail Industry In China #Eyewear

Since the outbreak of novel coronavirus in early 2020, it has continued to spread and affect many countries worldwide. Till mid-March, 151 countries and regions outside China had confirmed cases. If the outbreak is not contained soon, the global economy will turn to extremely risk of recession. Under the crisis, the development of global retail industry is hindered, and offline retail industry suffers snowstorm.Eyewear retail industry won’t be able to get rid of the crisis either.

Influenced by the epidemic, domestic retail sales declined steeply in the past two months in China due to customer volume decrease and cash flow pressure.Business operations were in trouble for a while. With the gradual improvement of epidemic prevention and control in China, the offline retail industry has also accelerated the pace of returning to work and motivate production. At the end of February, the opening rates of supermarket chains, convenience stores, department stores and shopping centers reached about 95 percent, 80 percent and 50 percent, respectively, according to data released by the ministry of commerce. But the opening rate of specialty shops and exclusive stores along the streets is still relatively low.No more than 50 percent of optical stores open till Early March in Cities of China.

In order to comprehensively realize the retail industry status under the outbreak of COVID-19, and to provide guidance and support for the current response strategies of retail enterprises,  China Chain Stores Association issued the "COVID 19 epidemic on the financial and operational impact of the Chinese retail industry and industry trend outlook" report. The main findings are as follows:

The rapid growth of O2O and community-based businesses in supermarkets and convenience stores under the influence of the epidemic will encourage supermarket to actively build standardized and full-category online services and accelerate the digital transformation of stores.Meanwhile, online shopping for consumer goods, fresh food and health products got rapid growth during the epidemic, this trend will further push online retail to refine operations to improve the consumer experience.In addition, it is increasingly urgent to speed up the digital transformation of supply chain and channel and establish full contact connection with consumers for the multi-format shopping centers that have been completely shut down during the epidemic.Besides,eyeglasses shop-online will be sprung up motivated by changing of consumption habit and the influence of epidemic.

In order to speed up the recovery from the epidemic and improve the competitiveness of the industry, we suggest that retail enterprises formulate short - and long-term countermeasures according to the degree to which they are affected by the epidemic.

In the short term, enterprises should strengthen the monitoring and management of cash flow, actively carry out financing and introduce investors, and carry out overall restructuring if necessary.In the long term, companies need to accelerate their digital transformation. Establish omnichannel and inventory networking, seamlessly connect omnichannel capabilities to meet consumer demand with optimal inventory; And interact with consumers through social media to grasp consumer demand at important moments.