Harrods, store for the fashion and luxury products reopened its retail outlets some days after the announcement of job cuts. The company confirmed that out of 4800 employees nearly 600 to 700 will lose their jobs. The Managing Director of the London luxury store mentioned that it is necessary to adapt to the realities of the post lockdown retail landscape.
“I don’t think people understand how painful the last 90 days has been,” Michael Ward said in an interview while walking through the new site in the U.K. capital’s Westfield shopping mall.
During the shutdowns aimed at containing the coronavirus, unsold goods piled up at Harrods’s million-square-foot flagship store in London’s Knightsbridge district. That site has reopened, but with safety restrictions and reduced hours that limit customer traffic.
“Our normal sale in the Knightsbridge store takes us four weeks to clear and that is with 80,000 people going through the store each day,” Ward said. “We are currently limited to 4,500 at any one point in time. It was going to take us months.”
The opening of the outlet comes in the same week Harrods announced that 600 to 700 of its 4,800 employees would lose their jobs.
