On October 31, 2019 Hanna Chubotina, Acting Director CEO and director of Arricano's retail space department, conducted the webinar “How to find and attract tenants to a mall, tools for effective cooperation”, organized by the Malls Club for professionals in the field of commercial real estate management.
Actual for today format of online communication has several advantages. “In the Malls Club there are a lot of participants from different regions, and for them the format of online training is especially relevant,” Artem Shlapak, Head of the Malls Club of Ukraine comments. - The webinar can be watched on any gadget. In addition, the participants receive a video recording of the webinar.” The initiators point out that the testing of the format of online learning has been successful this year and they plan to improve this project next year. During Hanna Chubotina's webinar, more than 50 participants from Kyiv, Odesa, Rivne, Dnipro, Sumy, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia listened how a mall can look for new tenants in Ukraine and abroad, how to build an effective tenant-mix, learned about criteria for choosing tenants, the specifics of attracting and working with anchor tenants, the effect from attracting new tenants to a mall, asked questions and discussed topical issues of effective cooperation. Summarizing the recommendations of Hanna Chubotina, 3 key factors of effective cooperation and 6 life hacks that help to find “your” tenant should be mentioned.
Top 3 factors for effective cooperation between tenants and malls.
1. Partnership is a basic principle of relationships. Common work should be based on transparency and trust, when cooperation is focused on a common goal - the growth of business parameters, including the increase in tenant’s turnover. Arricano has 5 retail outlets, Prospekt shopping mall, RayON shopping mall, Sun Gallery shopping mall, City Mall, shopping mall at Lukianivka which is being constructed and more than 700 tenant partners, building of partnerships with whom leads to improved qualitative and quantitative parameters, including increasing of turnover.
2. Creation of the ecosystem “retailer – lease department of a shopping mall – marketing department of a shopping mall” is one of the factors for obtaining quality results by both the tenant and the mall. In Arricano, the ecosystem works because the developer is committed to long-term effective cooperation.
3. Everyone professionally performs its tasks: the lease department accompanies lease agreements, agrees conditions, coordinates the communications with all services of the company, monitors trends, adjusts the concept; the marketing department provides marketing support, SMM and PR, conducts joint campaigns, the retailer provides data on the goods turnover, offers new formats, adapts to the mall, to the changes of consumer preferences and initiates campaigns and promotions. The joint work is aimed at making sure that any guest, visiting a mall, meets a friendly atmosphere, gets a variety of impressions, can purchase a product or a service he/she needs and would definitely comes back again.
4. About the strategy of a mall, including financial, leasing and marketing strategies, positioning and analytics a landlord can inform operators to make tenants understand the advantages of an object, the potential of a mall in general, and their opportunities in a mall so that by entering the cooperation they could predict their development in a facility.
Top 6 rules for finding tenants and working with them
1. Building of an effective tenant-mix in a mall is a continuous process. At any vacancy rate, even if it is a zero or a technical one (as it is in all Arricano shopping malls), one should make a wish list of operators which fit the concept of the mall and which should be kept in touch to open the store as soon as an opportunity arises.
2. Tracking of consumer trends contributes to the timely update of tenant-mix. For example, consumer’s interest in comfortable sportswear and footwear, which has been growing in the last several years, has influenced the formation of a strategy aimed at strengthening of this category in all shopping malls of Arricano: during this year, in Prospekt shopping mall, the representation of sports goods in active demand has increased by 10% (from 3% to 13%), in RayON shopping mall, the expansion of the sports goods category began in 2019 (Puma store has been opened in November) and will continue in 2020.
3. The strategy aimed at attracting tenants to the property depends on the purpose, objectives and age of a mall. To attract tenants two strategies can be used: a passive one - when a landlord processes incoming applications, and an active one - when he/she initiates an attraction of a new operator, tracks plans of new operators for development (both Ukrainian and foreign) and begins to negotiate the cooperation before the entering of the operator into the market. Attracting of new tenants to the mall influences the increase of attendance and the awareness of the object. The presence of new brands, which do not repeat from project to project, assures a margin of interest of guests for the period from 6 months to 1 year.
4. Update is a sign of development. In Arricano, novelty is a desirable factor in developing a tenant-mall relationship. For example, there are well-known brands represented in Arricano shopping malls in new formats, with beautiful showcases, there are operators which collection is being constantly updated, there is a variety of means of communication with customers.
5. Automation of tenant-mall interaction is inevitable. The relationships of retailers and shopping mall managers must correspond to time challenges. In Arricano, “Tenant portal” - an automated system of communication between a tenant and a retailer that allows them to access documents - contracts, bills, acts, orders, and to resolve issues related to cooperation much faster is being integrated now. 6. Both a tenant and a mall are responsible for the positive consumer experience of each visitor of a mall.
Hanna Chubotina, Acting CEO and director of Arricano's retail space department, said, “Both a tenant and a mall influence the effectiveness of the collaboration. To create a comfortable atmosphere where the customer buys, has a good time, chooses delicious food, enjoys his/her rest, both the retailer and the management team should work in synergy. To make a partnership developing and long-lasting, everyone must work for results.”