Lockdown shopping - good or bad?

All photos belongs to The State of Fashion 2020 report

Several retail stores where struggling before the outbreak of CoVID-19. It’s been many years now where the death of retail has been on the horizon. When several countries has but hard restrictions on their citizens and millions of people are being in lockdown, many consumers are changing their behaviour.

Several business, even in Sweden, are talking about the decrease of sales and according to Mckinsey’s Coronavirus update on The State of Fashion 2020 report, more than 65% of European and US consumers expect to decrease their overall spending on apparel.

However, according to another study, 45% of consumers say they have purchased “non-essential” items during coronavirus lockdown. Indicating that our behaviour towards online shopping has been pushed to new levels while being in lockdown.

According to John Lewis, more people buy self-care products, sportswear and loungewear in Britain, which might say something about how we spend our days when the living room has a larger part to play in our lives compare to bars or clubs.

Online shopping should be a good thing if consumers buy less of what they don’t need and manage to pick the right size. Further, if only a few storages are required instead of several minor stores close to consumers (they require a lot of energy etc. which has an environmental impact, further consumers transports has a high carbon impact), the shopping could be more environmentally friendly.

However, this might not necessarily be the case. If consumers buy more than they need to “try it on” and the returned clothes can’t be sold and if the packaging and transportation to the consumers is not done in an “environmental friendly manner”, the impact can be higher?

GreenStory has done calculations based on the assumption that clothes are being used. Their results show that to buy online is definitely better for the environment, but if the return end up i land fills this is definitely not the case anymore.

Well, the question remains unanswered for this time but it’s definitely a question that requires more research with different methods and assumption to be able to give a more presice answered.