My list of winners and losers of the (not so over) pandemic.
Expect ‘Covid Darlings’, MiuMiu skirts and Gorillas downsizing on their Faves.
Published in
5 min readMay 25, 2022
Whoever thought that the pandemic will change our lives forever, was most likely wrong. Of course, there are areas where we all optimized quite massively. First thing — remote work became a default for many. But will this model actually survive for the majority? We have yet still to see the psychological effects of isolation and interactions over the screen only but I doubt that it will be all rosy — for both the business and individuals.
Open your eyes and you see everywhere that the two years of unnatural on and off isolation had a scarce impact on the needs and expectations of humans.
We are still explorers that like to socialize with others and no barrier will change and make us the screen-addicted, banana bread-loving home-stayers.
How does this relate to business and trends on the market?
Which companies have capitalized long- and short-term on the restrictions that the pandemic triggered for us? Here is my list of winners and losers of the (still ongoing, although already announced over by many governments) pandemic of COVID-19.
Let’s start with losers, referred to by many sources as ‘Covid Darlings’
‘Covid or pandemic darlings’ — companies that became extremely profitable during the pandemic and now dramatically not matching previous growth forecasts (thanks Joanna Bakas).
- BNPLs — love them for coming up with customer focus, great innovation, elevating the customer experience and also expectations greatly (at the same time challenging financial legacies quite a lot, mainly to get better faster) but as even the Klarna’s superhero CEO admits they overshot a bit ‘assuming that pandemic growth = forever growth’. They have announced this week that they, unfortunately, have to lay off 10% of their global team. It’s not only Klarna but the other players will soon or are already facing the same challenge + another threat lurking around the corner: attempts to regulate this market to avoid people overusing those services (just check #Klarnaschulden on TikTok or take a look at Frontira’s recent article). Of course, the war complicated things for those guys a lot, but also without it, it would sooner or later become challenging for them out there.
- Streaming services such as Netflix. Is it only me or did Netflix lose its charm? It became my source of guilty pleasures and shows that only satisfy me when I need to rest my brain with something easy and quite frankly — stupid. For more sophisticated stuff, I turn to other providers (some even despite their terrible user experience). Joke aside, all those platforms are facing a big monetization problem and even if Disney seems to finally be doing better than Netflix — they will face the same challenges soon and will flex their muscles on what to do to be profitable again (like Netflix with their account sharing block idea does).
- ’10-minute delivery’ companies. Yes, sure everyone likes convenience and it worked well during the lockdown times. We all got excited about how cool Gorillas are and their promise to ‘be faster than you’. But this is another one that needs to cut their costs asap. The latest news is that they unfortunately also need to lay off hundreds of employees and down-size their business in general, focusing on just 5 countries to save the costs. Profitability became the challenge to overcome for the next months. The war might have had an effect on that as well — prices of products went up and in times of uncertainty, customers generally drop the convenience in favor of better prices and saving up on unnecessary delivery costs, switching the Gorillas and bio markets of this world for the discounters again.
- Clothing companies that are still stuck with ‘athleisure is cool’ idea. Many brands have made quite a fortune or even started existing just because we all stayed at home and decided to choose comfort over style putting ‘office wear’ somewhere far behind. But those that have been stuck with the idea, designs and plans to sell sweatpants only in the future might have completely missed the mark already. As soon as we are allowed to go out and enjoy time with others again, fashion becomes uncomfortable yet again — just look at the ultra-short everything from MiuMiu this season. I’m sure you recall the famous 90’-inspired micro skirt.
Who are the winners then?
- One of the biggest hit-takers of the pandemic: hospitality. Tourists spent an extra 1.8 billion nights in the European Union in 2021 compared with the year before. But this is still almost 40% lower than pre-pandemic levels, according to EU statistics. Tourism is an important sector of the world economy and is expected to continue recovering gradually in 2022 and throughout the next years (source: World Economic Forum). Everyone is thirsty for new experiences & adventures and domestic travel became also very attractive these days.
- As a result, the other loser of the pandemic, air travel and transportation, have suddenly become the popular ones again. According to the recent data — for the first time since the pandemic, leisure and business flights surpass 2019 levels with global flight bookings for leisure travel soaring 25% above pre-pandemic levels in April. Major recovery is on the way — and I’m sure those guys optimized the hell out of everything and did proper homework in their downtime as well.
- Electric vehicle manufacturers — the car industry has been affected by the pandemic quite a lot, undoubtedly. But global electric car sales have actually doubled in 2021 and are forecasted to rise even more in the years to come. ‘Six million electric cars (battery-electric and plug-in hybrid) will be shipped in 2022, up from 4 million in 2021, according to a new forecast by Gartner. Part of their charm is that yes — people love sustainability and cost-cutting on fuel. But the reality is also, that when all the others faced problems with delivering cars due to the famous ‘chip’ and parts delivery delays, the electric models were somehow available and are becoming quite affordable too.
- Little, cheeky bonus for you 😬 — Vacation sunscreen. The apparently ‘world’s best-smelling sunscreen’ with their ads and look having the nice 80’ touch is having a major moment. The nostalgia trend seems to be working well for them (especially after we all missed out on a vacation or two…) as since their debut last year, Vacation has experienced 500% YoY growth in monthly DTC revenues, according to the company. Looking at the branding, it makes me want to have a nice and relaxed beach party as well.
