By GREGORY ZELLER //
A comprehensive “preliminary” report on the state of Long Island retail details across-the-board shortfalls – many are pandemic-related – and offers a clear strategy to breathe new life into the critical sector.
Produced by the Long Island Business Council, “The Retail Sector on Long Island: Overlooked, Undervalued, Essential!” dissects the sector’s fundamental effects on Island socioeconomics in three distinct sections. Part one is pure economics, reviewing retail’s performance historically and during the COVID-19 pandemic; part two identifies significant sector challenges, ranging from “hypercompetitiveness” and workforce availability to evolving technologies and new consumer preferences.
Part three – the “most important section,” the LIBC notes – includes a 12-step action plan designed to overcome these challenges and reinvigorate a sector that “impacts the lives of every Long Islander,” according to the Business Council.
Released Wednesday, the three-headed report represents the LIBC’s “inaugural effort” regarding retail-sector improvements as part of the post-pandemic economic recovery, with significant discussion and important collaborations yet to come, noted LIBC Nassau Co-Chairman Richard Bivone.
“We need to look beyond the pandemic and work to prompt the structural and systemic changes that can help ensure when recovery comes, it will be complete and sustainable,” Bivone said Wednesday.
Michael Harrison: Upping LI’s e-commerce game.
The 112-page report, officially authored by LIBC Executive Director Michael Harrison, references retail as “an historical and consistent growth sector” and calls on business owners, chambers of commerce, government officials and other regional stakeholders to implement the 12 action steps “alone or in combination.”
Topping the list is the formation of a public-private Long Island Virtual Trade Show, which the Business Council envisions as a scalable, searchable online database focused on regional supply chains, industry promotion, talent acquisition, best practices and other business-development imperatives.
Other action items include a renewed commitment to e-commerce, new technology adoption, stronger physical infrastructure, modernized support infrastructure, an “integrated regional micro-fulfillment infrastructure” and “sales tax fairness,” according to the report.
The formation of an official Long Island Regional Retail Council is also essential, the report notes, while stakeholders must commit to reimagining the retail workforce, creating better customer experiences and creating “aggressive omnichannel strategies” to promote retail interests, all part of a coordinated, Island-wide “retail advocacy” effort.
After a locked-down pandemic that supercharged e-commerce, that omnichannel strategy becomes particularly important to “shop local” endeavors, according to Harrison, who noted post-COVID retailers must “master an increasingly omnichannel landscape.”
“[That] means upping their e-commerce game, focusing on customer convenience and ensuring customer experiences are frictionless within channels and seamless across channels,” the executive director said. “To achieve this, retailers will need help from government and economic developers.
“A Long Island Virtual Trade Show … can serve as a basis for a ‘Shop Long Island’ e-commerce platform,” Harrison added. “The ability to implement that regional e-commerce platform, and help local brick-and-mortars become a viable part of it, will equip shop-local initiatives with a tool to navigate the growing omnichannel marketplace.”
The bottom line, according to the report, is that Long Island retail sales, “other than during the Great Recession,” have grown every year since 1992, including modest growth during COVID-plagued 2020 – and while the pandemic “did not affect all retail subsectors uniformly,” all Island retailers will need help adjusting to the new socioeconomic normal.
It’s essential that they receive it, according to LIBC Suffolk Co-chairman Robert Conti.
“Long Island’s retail sector has been so affected by the pandemic,” Conti said in a statement. “It is long past time for the sector and its essential workers to get deserved recognition and attention.”
