Covid 19 Pandemic has presented Grocery Retailers an opportunity it never had, brands want to come under the grocery umbrella as consumers do not want to hop from shop to shop, but go to stores that offer them with the maximum range of products they need.
As the coronavirus has sent a record number of retailers to bankruptcy court, we’ve focused on the massive stores that filed: Neiman Marcus, J.Crew, Lord & Taylor, and numerous others. For years, wholesale deals guaranteed sales growth with a legitimacy boost on top.
When department stores and specialty retailers went under, retailers suddenly changed their payment terms and canceled orders. Here is an opportunity for large box retailers to scoop these inventories at a bargain.
Beauty brands used to look for shared values and a cachet boost in a wholesale partner. But as retail braces for a second wave of nonessential store closures, beauty labels will take any chain with a strong sales pulse.
This will enable the Grocery stores to become a hub of growing beauty brands. Normally Grocery chains aren’t known for prestige beauty experiences, but some have taken steps to curate an Insta-worthy assortment and layout. At the same time, shoppers are eliminating nonessential stores from their excursions.
Mass grocers are a surprise lifeline for other products that don’t typically pair with them earlier, like last month book publishers told the NYT that their steadiest pandemic sales came from essential retailers like Meijer, Costco, and Target.
One problem these grocery retailers have finite shelf space and there are several solutions for resolving this issue.
- Through Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Tools retailers can find the brand or stocks that are most profitable and the least ones. This will enable them to weed out slow movers or ‘Non Pandemic’ essential brands and make room for others like books, cosmetics, computer accessories etc something that will sell readily alongwith essentials.
- Build your own online marketplaces. This is not easy and quick but it’s the best time to invest in this. There will be no issue with shelf space and ‘infinite’ number of brands can be included. This is something which major retailers are already working on and making following headlines:
a. Kroger to Build Web Marketplace to Compete With Amazon and Walmart
b. Walmart fortifies fledgling ad platform with omnichannel analytics offering
Retailer Grocers will become a hybrid of wholesalers cum online marketplaces with large distribution centers along with consumer centric locations. There will be no need to stock and display all inventories in one location, customers will be savvy enough to use multiple shopping options provided by the retailers like in store shopping, curbside pickup, instant home delivery and online deliveries. A true mix off online and multi delivery options suitable for customers.
It’s a bonanza for retailers and opportunity is here to consolidate vertically and horizontally by adding newer range and customer centric delivery options. Robust retail management system enabling data driven decision making will be core of this expansion. Richer the data, better the product portfolio.
