With many retail orders cancelled, postponed or delayed, and thousands of stores closed, everyone in retail-driven businesses is designing new strategies to resolve COVID-19 issues while also planning for a post-pandemic world.

Six apparel industry executives gathered online last week for a freewheeling Licensing International VRoundtable, moderated by Jeff Lotman of Global Icons and Fred Segal, that delved into such areas as prospects for seasonless fashion retailing,  short- and long-term planning; unisex styles; planning for the long term while dealing with immediate crises; and the challenge of effectively playing  in a world of “virtual shopping.” Licensing International members can access a recording of the complete discussion (including the challenge of “juggling chainsaws”), but here are a few tidbits from the panelists about the near- and long-term issues:

Jeff Lotman, CEO Global Icons & Owner Fred Segal

Let’s face it. This is going to be here for a while in one form or another. It’s not like someone’s going to flip a switch and we’re going back to pre-COVID, unfortunately.

Lauren Wilner, Chief Merchandising Officer, NOW///with
“The first 2-3 weeks, the conversation was, ‘Oh my god what’s happening?’… and everything was on pause. Last week and this week, a little sunshine is beginning to come out, because the world is starting to move forward, and move forward in a new way.

“I was talking with one of my mentors, Mindy Grossman, and she said anyone that is talking about ‘after Corona’ is dead in the water. It’s all about, ‘what does it look like now, in the new world starting now, not waiting until August, September, October, 2021…. So to me it’s about taking that energy we’ve felt in the past 4-6 weeks… and think about what does the world start to look like, what’s the customer behavior?”

Lawrence Dayan, President Fashion Accessories, Gina Group
“Challenges are coming at us like crazy right now, it’s like drinking from a fire hose.

“Half our brains are dealing with how we strategize for the future and how do we retool our business to get in the new world, so to speak.

“But we have some immediate issues like orders, our stock, customers’ stock; where is that going? Who has it? Who has open to buys…those are issues in front of us today, this second, so we are kind of dealing with the new world, [but also with the immediate situation, and that’s not something that we’re going to be able to dig out from for a while. No matter how open those retailers are, there’s still going to be a lot of residue that’s going to hurt our open-to-buys, hurt our retailers’ open-to-buys. While half our mind is strategizing, the other half is dealing with survival.” 

Andrew Leigh, President, Jerry Leigh
“The biggest challenge we have is what is the retail landscape going to look like and who is going to survive?  There are some obvious winners right now such as those people that sell essentials like Target, Walmart and CVS.

“The big unknowns are the other big box retailers. Part of the day I feel like I am a banker in the sense of, who am I credit- checking, who am I going to allow credit to, and how am I going to work with this one?  It’s an area I didn’t really worry too much about in the past because it was only every once in a while you came across [a Chapter] 11 or 7. Now it is ‘Who is the candidate of the day?’

“The excitement for me is you are never going to get a shot like this again. We all get that chance right now to redraft our teams and take a look at ourselves and that’s the exciting part. If you haven’t taken the last 6-8 weeks to look at your process and how you are going to move forward, you have really wasted that time.” 

Steven Armus, VP Global Partnerships and Licensing, Kontoor Brands
“You have to live in the future now and think about how things are going to look and how you are going to adapt.  I have had  more conversations with potential partners in the last six weeks than I have in the last six months.

“I think everyone is looking for a reason to be optimistic and for opportunity.  There is a new openness. That means how we take that all in and make the right business decisions that affect us not just two months from now, but 18-24 months out.  I look at that as a very positive development out of this whole thing.

“Some retailers rely on the consumer hunt in their stores and that is going to change. There will concerns about how many products will be in the stores and how much space there will be between racks. This is a short-term view that won’t go away.” 

Michael Fernandez, President, The Levy Group
“We are in a retail environment where people on either side of the table have an opportunity to purge those negative equity positions. You will see a lot of factoring issues in the next 90-120 days and we will see how Q4 is going to be really important and see what promotional cadences and what the markdowns are.

“Many people are talking about promotional cadences and what the markdowns will be, but I don’t know how you survive with markdowns on top of lost sales. In wholesale, it would be liquidation on top of markdowns. If you are wholesaler, your spring 2020 line might become your spring 2021 line.”