Surviving Retail brands are now passing key elements of the fiscal pain of this crisis further down the supply chain by offloading committed orders, or worse still refusing to make payments.
As a business growth and transformation practitioner this change in relationship between buyer, supplier, and employee will no doubt have wider ramifications to accelerate a trend that started prior to Covid-19, and will no doubt gather greater pace as traditional retail continues its further decline.
The short term winner no doubt will be the consumer - you and me!
There's been a huge shift in B2B sectors that's seeing brands that were once a supplier to the wholesale and retail sector choosing to go direct to the consumer (D2C).
And where 90% of those consumers say they are more than happy to deal with them - so, is today's supplier possibly tomorrows competitor?
Prior to this crisis we read that 'Nike' is to end its supply agreements with dozens of independent retailers as it accelerates efforts to sell more of its products direct to consumer.
If you operate in other sectors of the retail landscape, especially those in the supply chain side of B2B who rely on retail as a key partner, you might be thinking 'so what'?
If a brand/company, or dare I say it former (furloughed) employees wanted to reinvent itself it must first take a serious note of those changing behaviours and recognise that inertia is firmly in the hands of today's consumer.
Daily there are more brands/companies (your current suppliers and employees) electing to go where they never went before which is to build a direct relationship with 'your' customer' and look to cut you out.
And the rocket fuel that's helping them get there is the prolific use of social media to help educate, inform, listen, learn, and most likely transact.
Social commerce doesn't require a consumer to be 'driven' to your website, it doesn't require a consumer to spend an age going through your funnel today, that was yesterday!!
The reality is you could be buying your next car from social platforms like 'TikTok', Instagram, Weibo, WeChat, Alibaba or others that are constantly evolving the commerce landscape.
Where we find ourselves today is at the end of the beginning of e-commerce. In 2019 a little more than $3 trillion dollars in global retail was transacted online and was largely comprised of the sorts of products that are relatively simple to transact — electronics, airline and event tickets, shoes, and a range of other commodity items. However, the outstanding opportunity is $27 trillion remaining in the global retail economy, including things that are fundamentally more complex purchases.
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