The Coronavirus Is Closing Down Malls - Now What? | Retail Today With Bob Phibbs, the Retail Doctor - Flash Briefing

Today is Monday, March 16th. I'm going to change things around today. You know, we're in a new retail environment. This last Thursday when Disneyland announced they were closing and all of the major sports franchises decided they were postponing indefinitely, and then on Friday came New York deciding that all Broadway theaters would close. And then Sunday, yesterday, I realized that the American Dream Mall, one of the newest malls in America, has decided to close for the next two weeks. And what that said to me was, we're in a new normal. So if you have decided that the coronavirus is not going to affect you, I can tell you it is.

Today I want you to be thinking about should you stay open or closed and how that affects your employees and your customers and making sure that it is really grounded in what's going on in the world. Because at the end of the day, retailers are there to support their customers and whether you know it or not, you're probably out of business anyway for the next two weeks because we're being told, "Do not gather in large gatherings and make sure that you self-hibernate basically." And so there's gotta be any demand for a lot of things.

So, I want you to think today about, "Well, if I'm not going to use that time in my store to wait on customers, what am I going to do instead?" Maybe you're going to actually go to your store and do FaceTime videos, so you can maybe wait on customers virtually and then bring your packages to them in the car. They use PayPal or something to pay for it. Maybe you're going to go through and look at a lot of other things, but in the next two weeks, each day, I'm going to give you specific topics that you can work on during this time of crisis to become a better retailer and to come out of this stronger than ever before.

I hope you'll tune in and tell your friends. And today, just consider that you already pretty much are closed due to low demand and consumer sentiment. What are you going to do for these next two weeks to get yourself ready when inevitably this starts to pass and we find a new normal in retail?

If you love what you heard on Retail Today, connect with Bob by visiting retaildoc.com or send a message to bob@retaildoc.com. Thanks for listening!