Retail Insights #15 Welcoming 2021 transcript

Jerry Fox:
Hello again, my name is Jerry Fox, President and CEO of Bish Creative Display. Welcome to 2021. It’s been a very difficult year and we cherish the lives we lost and cherish those who served and suffered during this pandemic. Someday, all of us will look back at 2020 and realize what we learned. We learned patience. We learned we cannot get everything we want, when we want it. How many of you had to print out a picture of something to give away as a gift during the holidays because it didn’t arrive in time. We learned respect. We learned to shop with masks on and be respectful of each other.

Jerry Fox:
If you go back in time and look at pictures of when your younger to when you’re older, you’ll see that the one part of your body that doesn’t change is your eyes. So as the saying goes, the eyes have it.

Jerry Fox:
We also learned to persevere. We learned to move forward; go in a different direction. The new normal is the normal, so we did notice some things that are changing over the past few weeks. Traffic is up on the streets. If you look at the highways and byways of life as people are getting back to a hustle and bustle. Sales in many categories are up; food, hardware, alcohol, not so surprised on the last one.

Jerry Fox:
Certain retail categories will struggle. Fashion will be an industry that will struggle for quite some time were we’ve learned to go through life in a casual manner. Other categories will continue to grow. We have one client that’s increased their order of craft beer tap handles. Why? Because they believe and know that once we are able to go into a bar, a cold draft beer will be required.

Jerry Fox:
My advice to retailers, your chance to change is now. If you’ve changed nothing over the past 10 months, change now. As the saying goes, hindsight is 2020. We will all look back someday and realize 2020 taught us more than we expected. As our friends at Frederick Wildman and Pol Roger say, “One bottle is not enough.” Cheers till next time.