Speaker John Fernie on Life and Work Post Covid 19

Members of Kilrymont Rotary were treated by past President John Fernie to a talk entitled Life and Work after Covid 19.  It was the usual Zoomarama meeting with John having hotfooted from a winning round at Blairgowrie.  John has an almost religious passion when it comes to retail and we knew we were to be treated to an informative and entertaining evening.

We all know that life is changing. There is the growth of online shopping in conjunction with the closure of many shops and well known stores.  What will be the knock-on effect to landlords? There is even the possibility of affecting pension schemes which have funded many developments such as Braehead,  closed and unlikely  to be used again in the near future.  Shops which relied on office workers are not seeing a footfall with the rise of home working.  Professional work, especially financial, can be easily done from home but even then, heating, lighting and indeed space may become a problem for many.  This in turn produces too much unused office space, worried landlords, and Company Voluntary Agreements to amend rents.  Will future homes require builders to provide office space?  Already there seems to be a shift from urban to rural working.  The CIPD forecast for flexible working was 18% pre pandemic and presently stands at 37%.  More free time along with less commute is leading many into a more active lifestyle, reflected in the growth of cycling, jogging and even in the uptake of golf.  Of course if home working becomes established and there is no need for the office, cheap outsourcing may become an issue?

There already was a trend for online shopping pre pandemic but we have seen a rapid acceleration of this trend. On line food shopping accounted for 7% of sales during May 2019 and this had risen to 13% May 2020.  It may just have peaked at this, as online shopping is expensive to deliver. Latecomers to the online market such as M and S may just have miscalculated.  In contrast non-food online shopping accounts for 30% of sales and is still on an upward trend.  At least until Government find ways of realistically taxing the large online providers.

 Supermarkets during the last months were well placed to meet demands. They have good well established supply chains and indeed sales of foodstuffs increased.  Sales up and profits down - more staff, social distancing and the cost of keeping the store Covid free.  Sales may well be starting to decrease as we once again can eat out.

We know the future is bound to be different.  A cashless society for certain, hopefully a time when our town centres still exist, but possibly not in their present form.

John took many questions in a lively debate or as lively as zoom could make it and was thanked by Marilyn who vowed to buck the trend of online shopping.