When COVID lockdowns began last year, brick and mortar retailers were hit hard.

Many stores closed and shoppers moved online.

It looked like it could be the end of shopping in person as we knew it.

If you were sort of an old traditional mall-based retailer, you were kind of fighting for

your life.

That's our colleague, Suzanne Capner.

She covers retail.

She says that a lot of people didn't think many clothing retailers would survive 2020.

They were running out of cash.

They had to raise extra money.

They had to close all their stores.

Macy's recorded like a billion dollar loss.

Things were really pretty dark at the beginning.

It was unlike anything these executives had ever had to go through before and it really

raised a lot of questions about who was going to survive this and you had a lot of the

weaker players going into bankruptcy as a result.

But rather than a retail apocalypse, the pandemic has actually brought about more of a retail

renaissance for the company's operating major chains.

This year, for the first time since 2017, the retail industry plans to open more brick

and mortar stores than they close.

It was really the return of the store this year.

So there is a big reset taking place in the retail industry.

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