A few weeks ago, when it became clear that COVID-19 would have immediate and lasting impact on the retail industry, it became clear to me that we needed to make immediate changes to the marketing plans we had set forth for this year. Many retail leaders and friends were telling me that they were overwhelmed by the onslaught of tone-deaf vendor outreach, reinforcing the decision I had already made in partnership with my sales leadership team. We had decided that until stores opened and the world was back to normal (whatever that means when we emerge), we were only going to publish content that met our retail partners in this moment. RetailNext is lucky to have a tremendous amount of retail expertise, rich data on brick and mortar stores, and awesome retail partners who are always willing to share their opinions and ideas.

We are pleased to announce the launch of the RetailNext COVID-19 Resource Hub. We have separated these resources from our full resource library because we believe focus is critical at this time. We all know it's hard enough to achieve any level of focus as we school our kids, worry about our families, and think about what the world will look like when we surface from our isolation. I hope this is helpful - if you are digging deeper on a topic, please visit our full resource library.

Our Resource Hub is separated into three sections (Industry Reports & Surveys, Blog Posts, and Retail Recovery Tools) and in the coming weeks we plan to continue adding materials that should aid you in your planning. Key materials that I think you will find most useful are:

1. RetailNext's Performance Pulse for March, highlighting traffic trends through the past month. The data is unexpected, given the current climate. However, we believe that as we emerge from the restrictions on our everyday lives, this data will be critical to our collective understanding of how to plan and measure our recovery.

2. Our Second CEO Retailer Pulse highlights how CEO's and other retail leaders are thinking about recovery, timelines, and operating realities.

3. Starting next week we will publish a series of short webinars focused on specific areas that need consideration as we move towards a reopening of retail. You can see an overview of the topics we will cover and we welcome you to send any questions you may have to retailrecovery@retailnext.net.

I hope you enjoy these tools, please send any feedback or questions to me at bridget@retailnext.net. Be safe out there.

RetailNext is also supporting retailers in reopening stores through occupancy capabilities. Learn more here!

Join the #retail, #inspiringretail and #COVID19Retail conversations on Twitter @bridgetjohns, @RetailNext, LinkedIn at and www.facebook.com/retailnext.