Adaptive Fashion: Apparel Retailers Must Embrace Change in 2021

After a tough year of trading, everyone in fashion and apparel is hoping for a return to sales and revenue growth in 2021. So while the recent news about the amazing progress in COVID-19 vaccines offers genuine hope that an end to the pandemic is on the horizon, we shouldn’t let this justifiable optimism cloud the fact that a recovery in brick-and-mortar retail may take time to play out. Vaccines will take many months to roll out fully. And then you have to consider how long it will take for shoppers to feel comfortable coming together in busy retail spaces again after that. Embrace change and adapt quickly So the pandemic is set to continue dominating both the business and the consumer landscape in the short term. Retailers need to be prepared for e-commerce levels to remain elevated and store footfall suppressed throughout the holidays and well into next year. In fact, it’s possible some aspects of consumer behavior may never return to the pre-COVID-19 world. Many people are now recalibrating their priorities and recentering their social and working lives around the home environment — a shift Accenture has called the start of “the decade of the home.” The long-term implications for fashion

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