Drapers Fashion retail industry news, trends and analysis
The UK’s supermalls market is forecast to grow by 7.2% over the next five years, outpacing growth in other physical retail locations, forecast at 5%.
A supermall is defined as a large shopping centre that is over 1 million sq ft and usually has annual footfall over 20 million.
Global Data’s report, UK Supermalls 2017-2022, predicts the market will reach £12.3bn in 2022, after 43.2% of the UK population visited a supermall in the past 12 months. Clothing and footwear will remain the largest sector and biggest contributor to growth within these large-scale shopping centres.
Fashion retailers such as Primark, H&M and JD Sports have created large format destination stores in supermalls with strengthened product ranges, suggesting a new set of key retailers will usurp traditional anchors such as Debenhams, Next and M&S in the coming years, Global Data said.
The curious things about Shopping Mall’s is that when you ask people, many of them don’t like them and bemoan how they wish shopping could go back to how ‘it used to be’, but then can’t get enough them!
So much for the general public. What they want and what they say are often two different things.
Supermalls are simply not a preference for a significant minority: those who hate modern muzak, and those for whom the scale and overabundance of choice creates true mental anxiety or requires too much exertion (Shopmobility notwithstanding), including some autistic people and their carers. And megamalls are not a great solution for the time poor (overall or within “normal” trading hours)
Retailers need to look at offering multiple options: customer order (various channels), easy to shop stores in convenient settings (easy to get from car or transport to shop of choice, within normal commuting patterns), alongside megamalls and megaoutlet centres.
I think this may be right with Millennials – after all its interesting that Misguided has opened in malls as opposed to Oxford street. The shopping habits of millenials via a sample size of 2 (daughters) in their late 20s demonstrates that they do 90% of clothes and accessory shopping online, and if they go out shopping they will always choose a mall. Other demographics will vary but this generation shop completely differently than older one.
They will grow faster because they are newer. Better facilities, better parking, more appropriate design. Older malls will suffer. Declining footfall will lead to less investment which in turn leads to declining footfall.