Analyst Weighs In on How the Bombing Will Affect Local Retail

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

With a major swath of Back Bay shopping still part of a contained crime scene, businesses on Newbury and in the major downtown malls (Prudential Center, Copley Place) have opened their doors in spite of slow foot traffic. WWD reports that while shops like Scoop NYC and Jack Wills were quick to serve customers, others like Saks Fifth Avenue (which has since reopened but was temporarily used as a staging area for the FBI) still question business in the days ahead. All but four of the 75 businesses in the Prudential Center have reopened, the Boston Globe reports.

Analyst Craig Johnson of Customer Growth Partners tells WWD:

There is a lot of retail in the immediate vicinity. That will have an impact for a while. There may be a reluctance for people to go in the area to shop for the short term, just this month.

In studying the impact of terrorism and national disasters, Johnson asserts that cities face a "momentary" drop in business, which the exception of 9/11 in New York, which resulted in declining sales nationally for a month. He continues to say:

The impact will be more micro than macro. The Back Bay area will be challenged for a while but will come back strong.

Though customers have been few and far between, typically just browsing, area stores are rising to the occasion in providing therapeutic services of the non-retail kind. Bodega owner Oliver Mak mentions to WWD that in his store they are "just talking about stuff—group therapy." Over at Back Bay Yoga tomorrow night, a healing vinyasa yoga session will be led in conjunction with lululemon Newbury and lululemon Prudential Center. Along with activities of that nature, we predict an outpouring of fundraising in the retail sector following Marathon Monday's bombings.
· Boston Bombings Put Major Cities on Alert Across Globe [WWD]
· Block by block, Back Bay begins to recover [Boston Globe]
· Items to Benefit the Bombing Victims and Other Updates [Racked Boston]