Corona: trade is sounding the alarm! Many traders will not survive a new lockdown

• For many traders, that is Christmas sales the most important sales driver of the year.
• But given the second Corona-Wave now threatens new restrictions just before Christmas.
• The trade association HDE warns of one Shop dying.

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Munich. The retail association HDE the federal government has urgently warned of further exit restrictions in the important Christmas business. “A nationwide Lockdown with renewed business closings it is imperative to prevent “, said the managing director of the trade association Germany, Stefan Genth, opposite Merkur.de *. In many companies “the reserves are already completely used up”. Genth warned that there was another cut “many traders in the city centers would no longer survive”.

Christmas business is traditionally the most important season for retailers. For example, toy retailers make around 22 percent of their income in November and December, while watch and jewelery retailers make up 23 percent of their sales.

Trade: Many businesses make a fifth of their sales before Christmas

Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to meet with the Prime Ministers of the federal states on Wednesday (November 28, 2020) on further containment measures the Corona* Pandemic advice. Dealers in city centers are therefore likely to hit potential restrictions particularly hard. In the spring, many stores had to cope with a drastic drop in sales. In light of the lockdown, many people were shopping online instead.

This gave the already booming online trade an additional boost. The world’s largest online retailer wants to do this in the current year alone Amazon Hire 100,000 employees. According to media reports, however, the company hardly pays taxes in Germany. That causes heated discussions again and again in this country.

Looking ahead to Wednesday’s summit, Genth said there was “no reason” for business closings again. With “comprehensive hygiene concepts, retailers have shown that shopping is safe.”

HDE: permanently lower VAT

At the same time, Genth spoke out in favor of a permanent reduction in the VAT out. Because of Corona, many customers are currently avoiding the city centers. In order for the VAT cut to also give stationary retail “a real boost, it should definitely have an effect beyond the end of the pandemic,” demanded Genth. In order to boost consumption, the federal government had the VAT rates as of July 1st from 19 to 16 percent and from 7 to 5 percent lowered.

At the same time he demanded HDE-Managing re-established a state Digitization fund. In a first step, 100 million euros should be available for this. According to the ideas of the HDE Interested dealers should work with consultants to identify suitable digitization measures. The implementation should then be funded from the digitization fund. *Merkur.de is part of the nationwide Ippen Digital editorial network.

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