Luxury Stores Deal with Severed Supply Chains During Pandemic

Several retailers are dealing with severed supply chains as the COVID-19 pandemic has shuttered luxury designers all over the world.

The coronavirus pandemic has poured across Europe in March. It has led major fashion brands to halt manufacturing – affecting the international retail market.

“A lot of Italian factories were shut down for quite a while,” said Laura Vinroot Poole, owner of clothing boutique Capitol. “Most of our clothing is made in and imported from Italy, France or the U.S.,” she then added.

Many know Capitol for a “curated mesh of top-name brands and up-and-coming independent designers from around the world,” reported Fox Business.

Fashion influencers and celebrities would travel to discover new trends that the store brings in every season. Capitol has iconic labels such as Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Giambattista Valli, Isabel Marant, and Alexandra Golovanoff.

Unfortunately for those in the fashion industry, the international market of luxury goods is no longer a viable option as factories remain closed.

“We canceled all of our outstanding spring runway orders,” Poole said. She also says that they've already had their pre-fall shipments move to “June, July or August” instead of the usual May schedule. “We've canceled a lot of the runway orders, which are typically expensive or over-the-top. Think embroidered-feathers-circa-2007 fashion,” Poole then added.

Stores like Capitol rely on Italy for quality materials. However, the “epicenter of fashion quickly became a coronavirus hot zone, and its population of about 62 million people faced strict stay-at-home orders,” Fox Business said.

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