June – News from Britain’s Shopping Centres
As the national press shift towards highlighting reasons for optimism for UK plc it is interesting to get a perspective on life from Britain’s leading shopping centres.
Research conducted by Business Blueprints in April and May 2009 found that more than a third of shopping centre managers were already seeing a turnaround in occupier demand. Another quarter felt that this change was likely to happen before the end of the calendar year. It was notable that a significant number of centre managers we spoke to were currently in negotiation with potential new tenants to fill their existing voids.
The research also asked centre managers for their opinion on consumer confidence at this time. Although 39% rated this as ‘quite poor’, as many as 29% felt it was ‘neutral’ and no less than one-quarter felt it to be ‘positive’. Numerous comments were made that things were not nearly as bad on the high street as the national media had portrayed in recent months. Amongst those who judged consumer confidence to be currently low, we asked them to predict when they expected to see a turnaround in confidence. The average time was 12 months from now, i.e. summer 2010, however more than a third felt they would see this before the end of 2009.
Asked to estimate overall sales trends in their schemes, the largest group (48%) felt that there was no clear trend and reported ‘very mixed’ trading between different sectors. 16% felt retail sales to be generally ‘up’ but a similar group (14%) perceived them to be ‘generally down’. Asked for other comments about sales in their centres, 15% felt that the budget retailers were prospering. Within fashion, 7% found ‘young fashion’ and 4% ‘top end’ retailers to be successful. A further 4% identified the ‘mid-range fashion’ retailers to be the hardest hit, which is something that has been reported in the national media. 8% recognised that the food outlets remained strong performers.
If you missed the article in June’s Shopping Centre magazine please click here