Mark Teperson has revealed the uncertainty facing retailers as COVID-19 took hold of Australia.
As retailers continue to trade through the pandemic, these early days offer a glimpse into the fortitude of industry leaders.
Accent Group, which went on to clock a triumphant $1.1 million a day in eCommerce sales at the height of the outbreak, fought against the odds early on.
“If you wind the clock back to as COVID was unfolding in the landscape, the first tell-tale sign was really around a shift in consumer sentiment and declining traffic to malls,” the chief digital officer revealed.
“Shopping centre traffic was down, sales were down, and during the month of March, that really started to accelerate.“
“Towards the end of March, it got to an unsustainable point where not only were the health and safety of our team members at risk, but also fundamentally the business was at risk if we were going to continue to trade through the sales levels that they were.”
Teperson said the first concern was around the health and safety of its team and customers.
“We moved very quickly to working from home in terms of the store support centre," he said.
“But we also felt that we were at that stage when the virus was really ramping up in terms of the number of daily cases.
“We were putting our team and customers in harm's way if we were going to continue to stay open so [CEO Daniel Agostinelli] made the very tough decision to close the stores and to stand down 4500 people.
“I remember that day very vividly and reflecting very sombrely on the fact that it was his hardest day in his retail career.
“Having to stand down the entire business virtually is not something any CEO contemplates.”
Teperson revealed it was an uncertain period for retailers, as enormous fixed costs accumulated with very little sales coming in.
“What was interesting was that back in March, online retail wasn't surging either," he said.
“We were still comping positively on last year, but the growth was slowing.
“So it wasn't like you saw this immediate shift from one to the other.
“We were noticing a sustained softening in both.
“When the stores were closed, we really kind of rallied behind this idea of the muscle that we've built in our digital business.”
The retailer went on to convert its 400+ store network into ‘dark stores’, unleashing meteoric eCommerce sales in the process.
On April 26, it progressively reopened stores across the country after coronavirus restrictions led to the widespread closures in March.