Successful shopping center: concepts and accents

When renting an area in another shopping center, the tenant wants to be sure that his hopes for profit will not be in vain. Of course, traffic and tenant recruitment play an important role, but the main condition for a successful shopping center is a high-quality concept. Andrei Shuvalov, Senior Director of Retail Real Estate at Cushman & Wakefield, spoke about what it is and what it consists of during an open lecture “Concepts of Shopping Centers”.

Recipe for success

The concept of the shopping center is not just a planning decision, it is a clear commercial idea of ​​the future shopping complex. The concept allows you to determine which complex can be built in a given place in order to bring the owner maximum income in the long term, taking into account the changing competitive environment. It includes both technical indicators such as the optimal area for a particular shopping area, the width of the windows and the ratio between anchor tenants and small shops, and high-quality ones - recommendations on the composition of tenants, assortment matrix, architectural appearance and style of the object. But not only this matters: in a shopping center, an environment thought out to the smallest detail with its own character should be created. This is expressed in detail, so the name, the interior lighting, the design, and the organization of space are important.

Profitability of a shopping center strongly depends on the presence of its managers specific knowledge in the field of retail real estate, on how effective the current marketing of an object is. We must not forget that the tenants of the shopping center have the right to unilaterally terminate the lease agreement if they consider that the facility is undersized or poorly managed. Therefore, no sane entrepreneur will rely only on personal experience and build a shopping center on their own. In addition, cooperation with consultants allows you to keep abreast of the latest tendencies and tenants' moods, because their immediate task is to keep abreast of the market. For example, consultants know that if earlier Mediamarkt rented areas of at least 5 thousand square meters. m, then today he lowered the lower bar to 3 800 square. m, Auchan reduced the requirements from 19 to 10-12 thousand, the operators of the clothing segment - from 1 800 to 1 200 sq. m

Components of a quality shopping center

A significant part of the space around the shopping center should be occupied by parking, the effectiveness of which is estimated by a special coefficient taking into account the location of the shopping center. 2, if the shopping center is located in the city center, and 4, if the shopping center is built outside the city and has an anchor grocery hypermarket, are considered to be a good coefficient for providing shopping centers with parking spaces. This difference is explained by the fact that the main part of the flow of visitors to the city shopping center can use public transport. For example, the Gallery shopping center in St. Petersburg has an 1,35 coefficient, but this does not mean that the facility is poorly provided with parking spaces, because the main flows of customers come from the metro.

Another important parameter in the quality concept of the shopping center is area efficiency. It is defined as the ratio of leasable area (GLA) to total area (GBA). One hundred percent efficiency cannot be: for a large shopping center, which is considered an object with GLA from 50 thousand square meters. m, the usable area can be up to 80%, for medium - 70%, for small - 67%. Such a strange decrease is explained by economies of scale: in small shopping centers public and technical zones occupy a lot of space, which greatly affects the total usable area. Owners of small shopping centers can increase the efficiency ratio by placing trading kiosks in the corridors and changing the format of shopping galleries. Thus, they increase the rental area and, accordingly, the income from its rent. However, it is infinitely impossible to increase the utilization rate with a benefit for oneself: the premises vacated in the main shopping galleries will be occupied by anchor tenants, whose rental rate is five times lower, and the shopping center will begin to lose money.

The ratio of anchor tenants, which include operators with an area of ​​more than 1 000 sq.m., and other stores is another secret to the success of a quality concept. The rule here is simple: the larger the shopping center, the more there should be “anchors” in it. In addition, if the shopping center is located in a zone of large pedestrian flow, the anchors should account for 30-40% of the leasable area. If the object was built outside large pedestrian flows, then in order to create a center of attraction for buyers, you need to give at least 60% to the anchors. A vivid example: Auchan hypermarket is able to create a stream in 35 of thousands of people a day. The rental rate for it will not be high, but small tenants will be able to get more visitors, and the overall synergy will lead to an increase in rental income. If the shopping center is located in the central part of the city or near the metro, then having a tenant like Auchan is no longer important: there is a flow of visitors created in a natural way. All that remains to be done to the owner of the shopping center is to place a certain amount of quality “anchors” from the fashion segment.

For the shopping center to meet the requirements of tenants, a certain height of the complex is necessary. It is believed that multi-storey shopping centers are not very effective, because the attendance of the upper floors is much less than the first: if you take the first floor for 100%, then the attendance of the second will be 90%, and the third - already 70%. As for the height of each floor, for operators working in the mass market and the middle price segment, the minimum room height from ceiling to floor should be 3,5 meters, in the medium-high price segment —4 meters “clean”. The situation with hypermarkets and cinemas is, of course, a little different: in the first case, due to the shelf storage system, the room height should be from 6 to 7,5 meters, and in the second - from 8 to 11 meters for halls with 100 and 300 seats, respectively.

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A specific area requiring attention is the food court of the shopping center. Now the trend towards an increase in the share of catering in shopping center projects is relevant, and this is typical for all of Russia. In high-quality shopping centers, there are selected demanded, well-known at the federal level catering enterprises, and the landing zone is enough for the customers of each of them. Experts recommend that regional shopping centers not neglect federal brands, since any new shopping center with at least one of them will constitute substantial competition for local brands.

Finally, one of the most important elements in the mall is the central atrium. Being in it, visitors should have a good overview and see shops on other floors, because this is the key to attendance on the upper floors. The minimum width of the atrium should be 5-6 meters, the width of the balcony - 3-4 meters. In addition, there should be space above the head of visitors to the first floor: a high dome creates a feeling of a miracle, something that goes beyond everyday life, and this affects the mood of visitors.

Concept Accents

The task of the developers of the concept of the shopping center is not only to take into account all the technical features, the configuration of the site, make zoning and calculate customer flows. You need to have a broad vision, including in terms of architecture. For example, it is not necessary to follow the classical path of new construction - sometimes you can use what is already available. Suppose you can “fit” a new building into an existing one: cover the space between the buildings with a glass cap to create an internal volume with a separate entrance. Also, in conditions of increasing competition, it is very important to come up with an idea, a chip, something that would distinguish the project from the many available on the market. Sometimes the highlight may be the design of the shopping center. An example is a unique shopping center near Krasnodar OZ mall, which is one of the largest in Europe (GLA 164 thousand square meters). It has a unique futuristic design: the building with smooth streamlined shapes resembles a giant spaceship. However, the spectacular appearance does not mean that the object will not have any bottlenecks. Some experts note that the lack of OZ mall is the lack of a ring scheme, due to which the flow of visitors is divided into parts, and each wing works "for itself". The situation is aggravated by the fact that the anchor hypermarket of this shopping center - O'Key - is in a separate wing, and its consumer flows are not mixed with the general traffic of the shopping center.

Besides outstanding design, there are other ways to compete in the retail real estate market, for example, by offering a different pool of tenants. You don’t have to go far for an example: in Moscow, a new retail facility is being built near the Evropeisky shopping center. It would seem that the competition "head-on" does not mean anything good, but the rented-out area of ​​the "European" is only 6 thousand square meters. m. therefore, if you wish, you can fill a new object with tenants who are not there. The result is an interesting synergistic effect.

Recently, among the shopping centers of the new generation there are many non-standard projects. These include the Mitino-Park project, where a big bias has been made towards creating the conditions for quality relaxation and pastime. At first, they wanted to invite the Spar hypermarket to the project as an anchor tenant, but then it was decided that the object needed a more original food concept. As a result, a so-called “fresh market” with an unusual layout was made in Mitino Park, where there are shops with farm products, fresh food and other joys of home cooking. It is curious that thanks to this decision, the project began to be considered by international brands, which is quite unexpected for a shopping center on the outskirts of Moscow.

One of the latest trends in the search for diversity in the shopping center is an interest in children's and cultural activities. In the planned facilities, fear rooms, huge aquariums, theaters, museums, and even libraries are actively being designed. However, experts recommend not exaggerating the importance of these components: the problem is that consumers visit such entertainment only once, while people return to a traditional cinema again and again. So we can say that the recipe for the ideal shopping center has long been found: a good location, pedestrian and transport accessibility, the absence of competitors with a similar concept in the immediate vicinity, a high-quality “selection” of retailers, restaurants and comfortable cinema halls. All this already provides high interest of visitors and optimal profitability of the object.