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Business Solutions

COVID-19 SPOTLIGHTS CRITICALITY

OF HAVING SMARTER DATA, TOOLS AND

INTEGRATED BEST PRACTICES

MARK SIGAL
CEO
Datex Property Solutions

ONE OF MY FAVORITE FORTUNE
cookie messages is “May you live
interesting times.” Like it or not, we are
indeed living in interesting times. The
COVID-19 global pandemic has washed
over the planet, and in the absence of
pervasive testing, contact tracing and
a proven vaccine, many predict the
virus will play out in multiple waves of
unknown duration and destructiveness.

Owing to this, we’ve all been forced into
some combination of stay-at-home
orders, mask wearing and social distancing, creating cooks and hosts take a direct hit, but so too, do its
an economic, systemic and psychic disruption like vendors, suppliers, delivery services and a host of other
none seen since the Great Depression. This is truly an small businesses that support the restaurant.
unprecedented time, and not in a good way.
Case in point, I have a friend who is a purveyor of fresh
The retail landscape is ground zero of this disruption. fish to fine dining restaurants. When COVID-19 hit,
To put this in numbers, the U.S. economy registered 150 almost all ‘white tablecloth’ restaurants shut down. A
million people employed in April, and the retail industry 50-plus person company literally saw its revenue drop to
directly employs about 29 million people and supports zero overnight. Now extrapolate this dynamic to gyms,
more than 42 million jobs. That’s over a quarter of the movie theaters, department stores, sporting goods and
economy. salons, and you get a sense of the overwhelming carnage
affecting retail and the shopping center business.
To illustrate, when the Cheesecake Factory shut down
their retail locations, 41,000 hourly workers were The Hard Truth is that EVERYONE has to Write a Check
furloughed. That’s a small city of people losing their job The above should lay clear to everyone how fully the
from the shutdown of just one restaurant, and a lot of consumer, retailer, worker and vendor are dependent on
hurting, but that only tells part of the story. When the one another, and that no one is insulated from the potential
Cheesecake Factory shuts down, not only do its waiters, damage. For the many retailers, this truth, already self-

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