The Acceleration of North American Retail Challenges

The global pandemic has taken a toll on a lot of business in North America with perhaps the largest impact in retail and services sector. Based upon the most recent data, the following retail giants have filed for bankruptcy during the pandemic: Dean & Deluca, True Religion, CMX Cinemas, J. Crew, Gold’s Gym, Neiman Marcus, JCPenney, and Pier 1 Imports. While this is not exhaustive, it demonstrates how some large retail and service companies that were highly reliant on place-based business have failed to maintain market resiliency. And, this shift occurred in merely three to four months. While we should expect this trend to continue, we may also anticipate it having a similar impact on the education industry. It is still a bit premature to see the short-term impact on our industry, we should expect to see some fallout this fall.