As the coronavirus pandemic rages on — and with public health experts concerned about a major surge in cases — many brick-and-mortar businesses are searching for some semblance of normalcy in what has been an extremely difficult year for retailers.
Looking only at the data for the first two months of 2020, you might have been tempted to declare — and not without good reason — that it was shaping up to be a banner year for brick-and-mortar retailers. In the last week of February, national in-store traffic was up 3.5% compared to the previous year. The U.S. had experienced 23 consecutive quarters of GDP growth, one of the longest such periods in modern history. It felt to many like there was nothing that could cool down America’s red-hot economy.
