Retailers Consider Store Closures Amid The Digital Shift

The pandemic’s harsh impacts on retail continue to show themselves as brands report plummeting quarterly earnings and eye additional store closings. Inditex revealed what could be a blueprint for a novel online-offline model, while Ulta Beauty appears to be mulling the same strategy. And one retail expert says what is taking place is more an interaction revolution than a post-pandemic eCommerce revolution. All this, Today in Data.

Data:

1,254: Number of Ulta Beauty’s brick-and-mortar locations.

$465M: First-quarter net loss for Inditex, which included a 308 million-euro charge for closing stores.

100: Approximate count of stores in North America and China that Guess plans to close over the next year.

44%: Share by which Inditex’s net sales fell in the three months from Feb. 1 to April 30 due to the pandemic.

€1B: Amount Inditex will spend between now and 2022 to capitalize on the digital shift.