In the US, store closures are at an all-time high. 

Business Insider Intelligence

With 88% of total sales, brick-and-mortar is still the dominant driver of retail spend in the country, but in-store earnings aren't growing fast enough to keep the doors open.

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Sharp differences have emerged within handset makers and retailers over the treatment of devices during the lockdown.

"All standalone (single) shops, neighborhood (colony) shops and shops in residential complexes are permitted to remain open in urban areas, without any distinction of essential and non-essential," the ministry of home affairs said in a notification on Friday.

"We have decided to take this initiative to help our customers to overcome this pandemic and drive growth in the housing sector. With this, over 2.35 lakh of our customers will be positively impacted irrespective of their base loan amount," PNB Housing Finance Managing Director and CEO Neeraj Vyas said.

About 20% of the auto retail network, or 3,500 outlets, opened for business this week, with one-third staff to comply with social-distancing norms. As of Wednesday evening, some 50,000-60,000 employees were back at work, industry insiders said.

Maruti Suzuki restarted operations at 680 dealerships till Wednesday, covering almost 35% of the addressable market. The nation’s largest carmaker is seeking permission from local authorities to reopen all but 500 of its remaining over 2,400 outlets. The 500 showrooms are in Covid-19 containment zones.

Nitin Gadkari, the minister for MSME and road transport and highways, also called upon the retailers to start exploring option of home delivery.

Pandemic expected to magnify differences between healthy retailers and those with big financial troubles.

Communication between a retailer and a customer is disclosed. A payment card and a communication identifier addressing a wireless transceiver of a mobile apparatus are registered to an electronic service. The mobile apparatus receives, with the wireless transceiver, a plurality of packets relating to payments with the payment card of a plurality of trades of various commodities between the user and a plurality of various retailers, from the electronic service, extracts from the received plurality of the packets transaction information relating to the payments and supplementary information, and communicates, with a user interface, the extracted transaction information and the supplementary information to the user.

In accordance with one embodiment, a display strap for displaying a first article of clothing (e.g., a tie) with a second article of clothing (e.g., a hanky, etc.) includes an elongated strap body having a first end and an opposing second end along with a top edge and an opposing bottom edge. The body has a plurality of score lines to permit the elongated body to be folded and the first end be drawn toward the second end. The body further has a locking slit formed therein proximate the first end and a locking tab formed at the second end for reception within the locking slit to form a continuous, folded strap body that captures the first and second articles of clothing for holding thereof at a first location. The display strap has a flag portion that extends upwardly from the top edge of the body and includes an opening formed therein for receiving a fastener that couples the first and second articles of clothing together at a second location that is spaced from the first location.

Oakland-based Cream Co. Meats announced recently that, for the first time ever, it will start delivering its products on a retail basis. Statewide Covid-19-related shelter-in-place regulations mandated the closure of many restaurants and other businesses that regularly serve and sell Cream Co. products.…

News you don't want to miss for May 4:

1. Businesses such as bookstores, florists, clothing retailers, among others, can begin to reopen on Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced, according to the Associated Press.…

Impossible Foods, whose huge production facility is ion 85th Street in Oakland, has just announced a huge retail expansion, with its mega-popular plant-based Impossible Burger being rolled out this week at over 1,700 grocery stores nationwide.

All of those stores are owned by The Kroger Co., which operates in 28 states under many different brands including Pay Less, Ralphs, Albertsons, Vons, Fred Meyer, and many more.…

According to officials, retail demand started to build up gradually. In some cases, people were completing prelockdown transactions and others new ones.

Covid-19 has caused a huge irreparable dent in Indian retail trade which will have a devastating effect on the whole country said CAIT National President BC Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal.

The May 5-7 poll median of more than 40 economists predicted India's annual consumer price inflation fell to 5.68% in April from March's 5.91%, still above the Reserve Bank of India's medium-term target of 4.00%.

“The idea of store-on-wheels is that customers should not feel suffocated that they can’t go out and shop, and feel the same pleasure right at their doorsteps,” said Vishnu Prasad, managing director of Future Lifestyle Fashions that owns Central and Brand Factory.

The move came after Future group firms defaulted on loans taken against the pledged shares of Future Retail in March, which also impacted its share price.

“The idea of store-on-wheels is that customers should not feel suffocated that they can’t go out and shop, and feel the same pleasure right at their doorsteps,” said Vishnu Prasad, managing director of Future Lifestyle Fashions that owns Central and Brand Factory.

Major retail chains including Viveks, Shahs, Girias, Vasanth and Co are among the signatories of the letter, which fears job losses might start impacting one lakh of families, besides a steep drop in direct and indirect tax revenues to the state.

"PVR has opted to insist on not paying any rent for the period of closure. PVR does not own properties and all of its screens operate on rent," said a source in Chennai-based SPI Cinemas which was acquired by PVR in August 2018.

Major mall operators in the country risk losing 20-25% of their annual revenue due to the shutdown, as per a report by ICICI Securities.

Around 75 retailers that operate 200 brands have written a letter to mall owners, seen by TOI, stating that revenue-share percentage should be a flat percentage depending on the category of stores. They suggested, for instance, revenue-sharing percentage for vanilla brands should be 10-12%, including common area maintenance (CAM), while for fast food brands and large format lifestyle stores, it should be 7-8%.

The post pandemic society will witness a change in consumer behavior and overall lifestyle. It is estimated that consumers will be extremely cautious with their spending. The spending on luxury, travel, hospitality, and movies, fine dine, white goods, expensive gadgets, among others and see a drop.

The government feels this will allow shopping and leisure activities to start up while maintaining physical distancing as traffic will be less than usual and easy to control. On Wednesday, Madhya Pradesh notified retail stores to open from 6am until midnight.

Currently, Toonz Retail runs 107 stores across India and in the coming year it is looking to come up with stores in Rajkot, Raiberali, Lucknow among other cities.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey's stay-at-home order is ending Friday as salons open on Friday and restaurants open on Monday.

Ravi Saxena, MD, Wonderchef emphasizes that it is the best time to award industry status to retail sector for overall economic growth.

The move came after Future group firms defaulted on loans taken against the pledged shares of Future Retail in March, which also impacted its share price.

The company, which has a retail network in 450 towns, is further expanding by adding new stores in smaller towns through franchise route.

Vatika has leased this space to French firm Decathlon, which is into retailing of sports goods, at its project 'Shopper's Village INXT' in New Gurugram, Haryana.

Retail in India has not developed at the same pace as the products. Getting good quality retail is a challenge. The country has limited number of malls. There is no high street.

Industry watchers say wholesalers are holding back stocks of popular phone models in anticipation of a price rise by the month-end as production in China slows; brands as yet unaware of complaints.

In an interview with Fox Business, Cook said: "I see India as a huge opportunity for us. For years, we could not enter there unless we entered there with a partner into retail and we did not want to do that. We wanted to maintain control of our brand and so forth".

Due to an 'abundance of caution' as the coronavirus threat loomed, Apple closed all retail stores, corporate offices and contact centres in Mainland China. Last week, Apple warned that coronavirus outbreak will affect its business in the January-March quarter as worldwide iPhone supply will be temporarily constrained

Apple reopened 38 Apple stores which were temporarily closed after the epidemic, state-run China Daily reported. Only four stores remain closed.

"We strongly appeal to you to not increase GST on mobiles. The increase of 6% would directly lead to hike in prices of product, impacting consumer behaviour leading to a slowdown in demand affecting business adversely,” said the letter written by AIMRA national president Arvinder Khurana.

The tech giant closed all retail stores in the country from February 1 based on the advice from leading health experts. It aimed to reopen stores on February 9 but that date ended up being extended. The closure of Apple's retail stores in China, along with supply issues, has affected iPhone sales in the country.

"We will be closing all of our retail stores outside of Greater China until March 27," Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a letter posted on the company's website.

The industry body represents 1.50 lakh mobile retailers who may be unable to pay their monthly instalments and interest towards credit cards, vehicle loan, home loan and business loans taken by them. A similar letter highlighting the concerns of the mobile retailers was also sent to non-banking finance companies (NBFCs).

“We would appreciate it if the Finance Ministry could approach the RBI or the respective authorities to direct NBFCs and Banks to waive off DBD (dealer by down) and MDR (merchant discount rate) charges to retailers on paper finance and on digital transactions for at least 6 months post lockdown,” All India Mobile Retailers Association said in a letter to finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

“We recommend allowing all physical shops dealing on sales, repair and service activity of mobile phones, mobile devices (laptops and tablets) and their supporting accessories to be opened on a limited basis (three days a week for five hours) with limited number of staff,” AIMRA said in an April 17 letter to union home minister Amit Shah.

Handset makers and offline traders have urged the commerce and home ministries to allow the sale and service of mobile devices and its accessories through offline stores in the country.

All India Mobile Retailer Association (AIMRA), which represents 1.5 lakh such retailers across the country, wrote to commerce minister Piyush Goyal to not consider mobile handsets as essential items.