How retailers are coping with the new normal post-Covid

One-way traffic, hand-sanitiser stations, clothes quarantines and Perspex screens – shopping on the country’s high streets looks very different today than it did before lockdown began three months ago.

Non-essential retailers are now open for the first time in months, meaning a flurry of behind-the-scenes activity as owners adjust to the ‘new normal’ – from investing in signage and staff training to redesigning entire stores. So was it worth it?

Betterdaze, in Northallerton, North Yorkshire, is the country’s only combined record shop and juke box showroom and has been run by owner Gary Lewis and his wife, Marie, for the past ten years. 

Last week, Gary reopened his shop, packed with 250,000 original vinyl record LPs, singles and 78s from across the decades, and says it has been a moving experience.

‘When you’ve built your company from scratch it’s quite emotional when you shut your own business down,’ says Gary. ‘It’s also quite emotional when you get the nod to open it up again. When people come back into the store and say they’ve really missed what we do, it makes you proud.’

During lockdown, Gary was still able to sell items online and for collection, with jukebox sales in particular doing well. ‘One guy drove seven hours overnight from Devon to buy a jukebox for his wife,’ says Gary – but record fairs and jukebox hire, where Gary will load a jukebox with your favourite tunes for events such as parties and weddings, are still on hold. But it is the store itself which is the beating heart of the business.

‘There aren’t that many thriving record shops around and it’s a real meeting place, like they had in the 1960s,’ says Gary. ‘Many bands started that way and many people have become good friends because they met in the store.’

With social-distancing signs, anti-bacterial spray and separate entrance and exit doors, Gary has made sure the store is a safe place to shop and says it’s crucial for shops to get back to business as usual. Government support was helpful, but Gary stayed clear of the loans on offer.

‘I managed to build my business up without owing a penny to anyone,’ he says. ‘What has helped is flexibility from my landlord while the shop was closed. Even before lockdown, the high street was struggling, and if landlords are greedy there’s going to be nothing left on the high street except national chains.’

Graphic designer Sidonie Warren set up her boutique stationery shop, Papersmiths, with her business partner, Kyle, in 2013. The pair now have five shops in London, Bristol and Brighton, three of which were able to reopen last week.

‘I was both anxious and excited,’ says Sidonie. ‘It was a bit like opening a shop for the first time. We thought: Will we be inundated with people or will there be no one around? It was really nerve-racking.’

While the shops in Brighton and London’s Chelsea were a little quieter than usual, their original shop – in Bristol – saw a big increase in sales as new and regular customers popped by to say hello and stock up on greetings cards, notebooks and writing material.

‘We spent around £1,000 on fun signs showing the shop’s ‘house rules’, such as the number of people allowed in and the two-metre distancing requirement,’ says Sidonie. ‘It was totally worth it to be able to reopen and trade safely, and I stocked up on extra signs in case the rules change again.’

She adds: ‘People can ask at the till to try out items such as pens, and we’ve got a quarantine cupboard where we put anything that has been touched, which is something we have got to do at the moment.’ 

Sidonie kept the business going during lockdown by selling online and is also now doing click and collect, but turnover still fell by 95 per cent. ‘It’ll take a year for us to make up for lost trade, but our suppliers have been incredibly supportive,’ she says. ‘It was great to see our customers after all this time.’

Specialist sports retailer Berkhamsted Sports has been a fixture in this Hertfordshire town since well before Dave Walden and Nick Dufficy bought the business 22 years ago, having both worked there on Saturdays as teenagers.

Just before lockdown, sales were already falling dramatically and business collapsed to zero when the store closed. ‘We are a face-to-face business and online is not what we’re about,’ says Dave. ‘The first couple of weeks were really worrying. But then customers started contacting us on Facebook and Instagram with order requests and before long I was spending five hours a day doing deliveries.

‘It was really nice to be able to stay in touch with people and it probably saved me mentally as well – it was so positive and humbling to see how much people cared.’

But financially it was a huge worry. ‘As a sports retailer, March is the month when we get in the biggest amount of stock ahead of summer,’ says Dave. ‘It was pretty stressful having all this stock, 30 days to pay for it – and then the doors closed.’

The £25,000 Government grant, bounce-back loans and furlough scheme were, in Dave’s words, ‘an absolute godsend’. It meant that Berkhamsted Sports was able to reopen ‘with a clean slate and full of stock’.

The shop has social distancing, strict hygiene rules and extra outside space thanks to some artificial grass and a gazebo – so customers can try on sports shoes outside if they want to.

‘It was a bit like Christmas as everyone who came to the shop was really happy to see us and to be out and about,’ says Dave. ‘Of course, it’s not really normal as we’re wearing masks. But local people want the town’s high street to survive and to support local businesses.’ 

Cricketing stock will now be saved until next year, with the result that running shoes and tennis racquets have become the mainstay of sales. ‘It’s just been hard to keep up with demand for kettle bells and weights as everyone’s started working out at home,’ says Dave.

Founded 92 years ago, East Anglian independent retailer Coes kept trading throughout the Second World War, but it was forced to shut in March thanks to coronavirus. Its five stores are now open again and according to chief executive William Coe – grandson of the founder – ‘our customers are delighted to see us and we are delighted to see them’. 

The biggest effort in re-opening was to reconfigure all the stores to allow for safe and comfortable browsing, but it was worth it, says William.

‘There’s nothing quite like having customers coming into the shop. For many, it’s the first time they have been out for 12 weeks other than to get food.’

Turnover was down 95 per cent during lockdown with sales solely online. Even now the stores are open again, some departments are still hit hard, such as formal wear – thanks to events such as Royal Ascot being held behind closed doors, and the cancellation of weddings, balls and summer proms.

‘We will never get those missing sales back – they’re just gone,’ says William. ‘Now it’s a question of mitigating our losses and carrying as much over to next year, when life will be a little bit easier. For now, it’s just lovely to be back.’