We have already seen how the world has reacted to the Coronavirus pandemic and we also saw that there was a mad rush and panic buying in stores all over the world because there were stay-at-home orders given to people. This is also the reason why we had videos going viral of empty shelves and people fighting with each other to get that last roll of toilet paper that they can get. However, things are different when we take into account the fact that companies are reporting a slump in the sale despite those empty shelves.
If you were also fooled by those videos, here is what Costco has just reported. Well, we do know that the shelves got empty because people started buying everything they could get. However, it is also a fact that the condition remained such for only a few days and then things got back to worse than normal. The stores that would see 100s of customers coming in every day were remaining empty. Costco also says that they were hit hard due to the stay-at-home orders that were imposed by governors in the US.
Costco’s VP said that “Stay-at-home orders, social-distancing restrictions and some mandatory closures led to decreased traffic and sales in our warehouses,” He mentioned that “Limited service in travel and our food courts, closures of most of our optical, hearing-aid and photo departments, and lower volume and price deflation in our gasoline business negatively impacted our April sales by an estimated 12 percentage points, of which approximately 70% is related to gasoline.”
At the same time, Costco did mention that its e-commerce orders were seeing a huge hit since most people were refraining from coming out and ordering online instead to get the items delivered at their doorsteps. The company revealed it saw an “86%” growth in online sales which is “meaningful”.
