Shoppers shun city malls

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/03/2020 (2010 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Temporary store closures in Winnipeg continue to mount as retailers pay heed to the increasing coronavirus threat, transforming shopping malls into ghost towns and parking lots into vacant concrete fields.

The lengthy list of stores with locked doors grew by the hour Wednesday, mimicking the retail landscape across the country and south of the border. Most have indicated the lights will be out for a minimum of two weeks.

The latest companies to announce closures in an effort to curtail the spread of COVID-19 to customers and staff include Mountain Equipment Co-op, Roots, Tip Top, the Gap, Old Navy, Le Château, Holt Renfrew and H&M. Those accounted for a fraction of the number of darkened stores at the Polo Park and St. Vital malls Wednesday.

“This is eerie,” said Natasha Boulianne, 22, who was astonished after stepping off the escalator onto the nearly deserted second floor at Polo Park.

“I was expecting places to be open but most of the shops are closed, and the open ones are all empty. It’s like everyone just up and left,” she said. “It’s like something terrible happened and just about everyone from Winnipeg is gone, with only a few people left.”

The Hudson’s Bay department stores that anchor the two shopping centres were padlocked, part of a Canada-wide closure, although the retailer promised: “During this closure, our store associates will be paid for all scheduled shifts that were planned for the two weeks.”

Most locations had signs taped to doors and windows, directing customers to shop online, instead.

A man working alone at one empty store said it was his last shift for the foreseeable future. He received an email advising of a two-week closure, as of today.

“It’s dead in the mall,” said the man, who asked neither he nor the shop be named. “People are panicking. They’re staying home.

“I guess it’s a good thing overall. We want to look back on this and say, ‘Maybe we overreacted.’ But nobody wants to look back and say, ‘Oh, we didn’t do enough.’”

Individually, retailers are deciding whether to keep the doors open. Staff in several shops said they’d received no direction from the mall’s corporate offices on whether blanket shutdowns would be instituted.

Calls to the general managers of Polo Park and St. Vital weren’t returned Wednesday.

Furniture giant Ikea shut its doors early Wednesday, but stated its 7,300 store employees across the country “will be supported by a comprehensive benefits package and paid-leave policy.”

People are heeding the advice of public health officials who recommend everyone adopt social distancing measures, but it doesn’t lessen the strangeness of it all.

“This situation is without precedent, one would say,” said Maureen Atkinson, senior adviser at Toronto-based retail consulting firm J.C. Williams Group. “Not on a worldwide basis. There just hasn’t been anything like this in our lifetime.”

Atkinson said Italy is likely the model Canada is following, where food stores and pharmacies stay open while everything else closes temporarily.

“You want to do it in a well-thought-out manner, so you’re not mandated to do it… I’m sure every management team is finalizing their plans on when to pull the plug,” she said.

“It’s total guess work on how long to stay closed.”

The retail analyst said temporary closures might change some shoppers’ behaviour — perhaps foregoing a visit to a bricks-and-mortar store for the convenience of online shopping. However, cabin fever alone might propel people to get out and spend the old-fashioned way, once the health concern has passed.

“In the short term, it will accelerate online shopping, no question. But maybe we’ll be looking for stores and excitement and getting out, all of that kind of thing,” Atkinson said.

“When things start to open again, there will be a pent-up, ‘Oh my gosh, let’s get out there.’”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell