“The prospects for the Christmas business this Corona year are worryingly bad, especially for many inner-city retailers and especially the fashion houses there,” said the chief executive of the HDE trade association, Stefan Genth, on Sunday. “In the end, entire city centers could be lost.”
The HDE expects sales to increase by 1.2 percent to EUR 104 billion for November and December compared to the same period last year. Nevertheless: According to an association survey, due to the extension of the partial lockdown in the run-up to Christmas, more than half of the retailers expect significantly fewer customers and falling sales in December. “Even in the Corona crisis, people buy a lot of Christmas gifts, but they buy them online more often than usual,” said Genth according to a statement. Online retailing is likely to increase its sales by around a third.
In contrast, the stationary retailers in the city centers are afraid. Almost every second respondent (45 percent) sees his entrepreneurial existence threatened because of the corona pandemic and the countermeasures, almost two thirds (62 percent) are pessimistic about the further course of the Christmas business. Typically, many traders make the bulk of their sales in November and December. “If these sales fail now, a lot of businesses will be in trouble,” said Genth. The association calls for an inner city fund to strengthen the city centers and a digitization fund so that SMEs who are innocently in need can invest in their future.
The dining options play an important role in the declining visitor frequency in the city. “It has been shown again that the closed gastronomy and the canceled Christmas markets are noticeably lacking,” said a spokeswoman for the North Rhine-Westphalia trade association. In addition, there are very mundane problems: Some customers do not know where to go to the toilet – for example, all cafés are available there.
In small and medium-sized shops with a sales area of up to 800 square meters, as is currently the case, there should be at most one person per 10 square meters of sales area. For the additional square meters, i.e. department stores, 20 square meters per customer should be prescribed. Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) had defended the decision of the federal and state governments, the trade association had criticized it – and now got support from politics.
Cologne’s Lord Mayor Henriette Reker (independent) said on ZDF on Saturday: “I would have found it better to stick to the regulations, as I have the impression that the distance is better to regulate in the shops than on the street.” -Minister-President Armin Laschet (CDU) said on Sunday morning on Deutschlandfunk, with a view to the rush on the discount day Black Friday on Friday, one had to be prepared for the “shopping activity” in Advent: “To completely ruin the retail trade in our inner cities can not even be the goal. ”
Because of the fear of being infected with the coronavirus, shopping behavior has changed, many people no longer stroll through the city centers, but go shopping more specifically – or order online. The economics ministers of the federal states also want to speak at an online conference this Monday about how to avoid desertification of the inner cities.
The CDU economic council also criticized the new corona rules. These are “perfect for creating queues in front of supermarkets or department stores, which could further stimulate the contagion potential,” said Secretary General Wolfgang Steiger of the “Rheinische Post” (Monday). In addition, queues in front of supermarkets could have a psychological effect and trigger new hamster purchases. The regulation is arbitrary, said Steiger. “Will you soon only be able to transport one passenger in each of the buses, depending on the area, and only two students will sit in each classroom?”
But there are also rays of hope for the retail sector: business with household goods, home improvement supplies, furnishings and food is “currently satisfactory, in some cases very good”, according to HDE. In the week before the first Advent, Christmas decorations and advent calendars were particularly popular.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 201129-99-506284 / 4
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