Roughly 50 days later after the initial lockdown, China has successfully stunted the spread of the virus, and the country is not only witnessing the recovery of economic fundamentals but showing signs of upward momentum.

Capillary Technologies position as a leading omnichannel retail solutions provider for more than 400 retail brands in China, India, SEA and the Middle East has offered us a ringside view of how the epidemic unfolded. We collated data for 50+ brands across 10,000 stores in these three regions to understand the impact on retailers, the timeline as it unfolded and measures that can be taken to minimize the negative impacts of the epidemic.

After just 8 weeks since the initial lockdown, the retail market in China appears to be in the early stages of recovery. This is indicated by the surge in two key metrics: Sales Per Store & Customers Per Store in the past few weeks.

Compared to the lockdown period, in the "Probable Recovery Period"- starting from March 6th retailers witnessed 22% increase in sales and 43% increase in customers.

Key Findings

We are seeing an uptick in sales and customers after 6th March 2020. If we consider this date as a cutoff period, it has taken around 1.5 months for recovery to start after the Wuhan Lockdown (25th Jan to 5th March).

Key recommendations for Retailers on Charting their Road to Recovery

From our findings, below are a few takeaways on how retailers can tackle this crisis.

Being Omnichannel = Being resilient

From our findings, the most resilient retailers surviving this epidemic are the omnichannel retailers. Brands who invested in enabling a personalized omnichannel shopping experience are experiencing the fruits of their labour.

Live commerce as an emerging trend

Chinese e-commerce platforms Taobao and JD.com are leading the live commerce world by enabling the live stream viewers to purchase items while they watch. Live commerce as they term it, has become an emerging trend to bank upon amidst the COVID-19 sales slump.

Merging the offline and the online data to upgrade online selling

At a company level, offline teams should coordinate with the online team to divert the traffic to their ecommerce website/app and clear out the inventory. Brands can also improve the quality of customer engagement across relevant channels by merging store behaviour data with CRM data to communicate and notify its customers.

To access the full report along with key findings and geography-wise insights, visit: https://www.capillarytech.com/blog/capillary/business-recovery-strategies-china/