The Book I Had To Write
By Doug Stephens
I’ve been working on a new book due out in the Spring of 2021. The book I initially planned to release was a look at the relationship between art and retail, aimed at helping savvy brands take the next essential steps toward building truly transformative experiences for their customers.
On March 5th, 2020 that changed.
It’s no exaggeration to say that in the annals of retail history the pandemic will become a permanent mile marker, remembered for generations to come. I imagine that decades from now, business students in every corner of the globe will study its long-term effects on consumer behavior and corporate strategy. Companies in all sectors will point to this unprecedented time as the moment everything changed. The moment that every market, industry, vertical, profession, and category of product or service would, in some way be shifted from its axis. And for the first time in modern history, every wheel, cog and gear in the global retail machine would grind to a virtual halt.
“All that came before Coronavirus (B.C.) – the strategies we were pursuing, the issues the industry faced, and the trends we were following, would now seem at best inconsequential and at worst completely irrelevant in an AC (after Coronavirus) world.”
It hit me, that to publish a new book that simply furthered the comparatively rosy and erudite industry conversations of 2019 would be to ignore the herd of raging of elephants in the room. All that came before Coronavirus (B.C.) – the strategies we were pursuing, the issues the industry faced, and the trends we were following, would now seem at best inconsequential and at worst completely irrelevant in an AC (after Coronavirus) world. Indeed, this one novel string of biomedical calculus had perhaps forever changed the equation for global retail.
So, I called my publisher…
And made the case for a completely new book. A book that would document the Covid-19 pandemic, its impact on the sector and most importantly, the future retail landscape we can expect to find when we swing open the doors of our metaphorical bomb shelters of self-isolation.
“A book that would document the Covid-19 pandemic, its impact and most importantly, the future retail landscape we can expect to find when we swing open the doors of our metaphorical bomb shelters of self-isolation.”
Like you, I am eyewitness to a crisis of unimaginable proportions and a story that demands to be told. So, while it may not be the book I intended to write, it rapidly became the book I had to write.
The pandemic of 2020 set fire to the global retail industry. This new book will be a roadmap to help it rise from the ashes.