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Victoria’s Secret and More Shut Down Online Stores as Well (Business Insider)
Victoria’s Secret has temporarily shut down its e-commerce site after closing all stores earlier this week. TJ Maxx is also halting business on tjmaxx.com, marshalls.com, and sierra.com while its offices and distribution centers are closed. While many brands are hoping to mitigate their losses during the crisis by continuing to operate online marketplaces, those sales still require large amounts of staff to process, pack, and distribute purchased items. Coronavirus has already shut down a number of warehouses and it is only a matter of time before it begins to seriously impact distribution chains (even moreso than it already has).
How to Protect Your Business During Coronavirus (Business of Fashion)
Bringing your business through this crisis in tact is going to require major shifts in priorities, practices, and mindset, but it is possible. It has to be. The first and most important thing to do is to prioritize employee health and to make sure that you communicate early and often. Do not bury your head in the sand. That will not work this time. Next, plan for the good, the bad, and the worst; it will make it much easier to know when the time is right to take certain actions and allow you to do so with greater consideration and compassion for those effected by your decisions. Focus on cashflow, not revenue, cut expenses, and negotiate with your partners. You can do this. We all can do this.
Pronovias Offering Free Wedding Gowns to Engaged Hospital Staff Fighting Coronavirus (Daily Mail)
The wedding industry may be in turmoil — even Kleinfeld announced yesterday that they will be closing until at least April — but luxury wedding gown brand Pronovias is bringing a little sunshine to workers on the front line of the fight against Coronavirus by donating wedding dresses to hospital-employed brides-to-be. The program started in China at the beginning of the year and is now being extended to multiple countries around the world, including the US. “It is an honor to show my support and raise awareness for all of these women doing their best to overcome this pandemic,” said Pronovias Group artistic director Alessandra Rinaudo, who curated the special selection of $1000-$5000 dresses for hospital staff called the Heroes Collection.
Grubhub’s Lifeline to Restaurants Not So Altruistic After All (Eater)
When Grubhub, which also owns Seamless, announced that they would be suspending commissions from small and medium sized independent restaurants during the Coronavirus crisis, it seemed like they were doing something altruistic, but it turns out, their offer comes with a whole lot of strings. First off, in order to qualify for the relief program, vendors had to sign up for an additional year with the company. Grubhub also reserved the right to start collecting the delayed payments two weeks after the relief period, which they anticipate will be “no later than March 29,” which, at this point, seems wildly optimistic at best.
Monitor the Spread of Coronavirus With This 17-Year-Old’s Online Tracker (Democracy Now)
Washington high school student Avi Schiffmann launched nCoV2019.live to track the worldwide spread of Coronavirus back in December, when it was still limited to China and most Americans hadn’t even heard of it yet. The site tracks deaths, numbers of cases locally and globally, and talks about the number of people who have recovered. It also provides an interactive map, information on the disease, and a Twitter feed. The resource, which updates every minute or so, pulls information from the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and elsewhere. “I saw this on the news kind of a long time ago, and I noticed that it was really hard just to find the information,” said Schiffmann. “There was a lot of just misinformation spreading. So I decided it would be kind of cool to create a website and just kind of make it like a central hub of information.”
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