Thomas Ennis was on a fact-finding trip to Chicago last March when fears around the pandemic began to accelerate. As he boarded his flight home, he looked around the plane and realised that a vast number of the seats were empty. Chatting to cabin crew, he learned that 40 per cent of bookings had been cancelled in advance. By the time he returned home, the world had changed. The economy went into lockdown on St Patrick’s Day, and since then, Ennis has spent much of his time navigating his retail empire through the crisis. It has been a significant task.…