Anne Pitcher, Selfridges managing director, warns that the department store is 'in for our hardest year ever - boring shops won't survive'.

'Awful' is how she described the feeling when turning the lights out and pulling up the shutters on Oxford Street's most iconic store. 'the day we had to close was, for all of us, something we never thought we'd have to do – and something we haven't had to do since the war.' 'We will change the way we shop from this point on forever,' she says. 'We will shop more digitally, there will be fewer stores, I'm afraid. People in the short term will not want to visit public spaces as often or attend large events. It will be the most difficult year ahead of us that we've ever known.' The silver lining is that 'it's the years beyond that that are going to be the exciting times'. 'This is about reinventing retail, nothing less,' she adds. 'Stores will be different forever.'

full article: 'We're in for our hardest year ever - boring shops won't survive': Selfridges boss's warning

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