Shop You CEO Kelly Slessor says Australia needs to invest more in digital channels to help struggling businesses grow and avoid "devastation" due to the pandemic.
“In the UK and here they’ve rolled out relief packages for retail and there’s a lot of support financially going on but honestly I don’t think it’s enough,” she told Sky News.
“I think that we’ve underinvested in digital channels, we’ve underinvested in our retailers and driving them forward in an omnichannel environment.
“If you look to some of the biggest growing platforms in the world - Amazon hit one billion this quarter, Farfetch 500 per cent up, Temple and Webster 550 per cent up on profit – the thing they have in common is their digital experience.
“Not just channels, but actually offering a full digital experience, so we need to invest more”.
Ms Slessor told Sky News there would be “more devastation to come” after JobKeeper ends in March if there is not more digital investment.
“There's massive growth in click and collect - I think one of the problems we’ve had historically is we’ve tried to protect high street foot traffic, we think digital kind of eats into that, we’ve tried to protect shopping malls,” she said.
“But if we look to the UK, 30 per cent of all retail sales are done online, whereas here we’re only sitting on 12 to 13 per cent.
“It’s the small businesses, the ones that rely on their business for their mortgage payments and everything else – it’s those that we need to help digitise".
