The pandemic continues to catch Australian retailers – in some cases it’s been beneficial, in others (especially earlier this year) it has been negative, but now the renewed waves of the virus outside of Australia is starting to hurt.
We have already seen Premier Investments take action to close or reduce hours or shut completely some of its Smiggle stores in the UK (55 out of 131) and other markets such as Singapore and Hong Kong.
Yesterday, jewelry chain Lovisa told the ASX it had temporarily closed all 24 of its stores in France and 40 in the United Kingdom after governments reintroduced new lockdowns to try and control the latest wave of COVID-19 infections.
France recorded 45,570 new cases on Sunday while the UK recorded 23,254 new cases.
Lovisa told shareholders it currently expects the French stores to remain closed until at least December 1, and UK stores to remain closed from 5 November until at least December 1. Two stores in Scotland will remain open.
But back home and Lovisa says it has opened all its metropolitan Melbourne stores after that Victoria successfully reduced new Coronavirus cases to zero through a tough 16-week lockdown.
Lovisa shares fell 3.2% to $7.26, the lowest price in more than five weeks.
