What a second wave could mean for the hardest-hit business sectors
October 2, 2020Consumer confidence is a major factor in economic stability, particularly for retailers, said Karl Littler, SVP Public Affairs at Retail Council of Canada (RCC).
RCC expects brick-and-mortar retailers to be “less in the crosshairs” of economic shutdowns than they were in the spring, but another blow to the public confidence, and household budgets, could be “pretty disastrous,” he said.
“There are substantial chunks of the retail world that would be extremely stressed by a repeat of what we saw before,” Littler said. “There are a lot of entities that are not in any way recovered. Even some of those that are now back to roughly comparable year-over-year sales still have a big hole from earlier in the year.”