Retailing Post COVID 19

Retailing has never changed so rapidly as it has in 2020.Prior to 2020 I was presenting “Ghost Town, Clone Town, Home Town” workshops for small communities around the world. The emphasis of the workshops was that there were three types of communities and that success meant you had to be a “Home Town” to engage with the consumer.

Post Covid 19 that is more important than ever. Consumers have now been trained to shop online and this is now part of the retail journey. But they still want to discover the joy of shopping and small business has more opportunities now that in many of the last years

The key is communities have to reinvent themselves. They have to provide what the community wants.

How do they do that? Ask them.

Too many mistakes have been made by business groups developing plans and then telling the community what they were going to do. In today’s society the key is to start with the community and ask them what do they want from small businesses in the community and then building a strategy around those ideas.

Home Town are they only way forward, but they must listen to the community and then implement the ideas, it starts with the community not the small businesses.

The key is for a business community to build a reputation

1 Ask the community what they want from the business community

2 What does the community want their town to be known for

3 What do small businesses need to do to achieve these goals?

4 How can small business in the community then exceed these expectations?