Illustrative Image: The renovation and expansion of Fourways Mall is complete, more than three years after breaking ground. (Photos: Gallo Images / Luba Lesolle) | Footprints. (Image: Freepik) | (By Daniella Lee Ming Yesca) If there is one thing that we all quite like, if we’re honest with ourselves, it’s a good, old-fashioned South African shopping mall.
It’s one of those places where you know you’ll always have power, it will be clean and everything will work. It may be oversharing a little, but I sometimes feel quite energised in a mall, because I know I can usually get stuff done.
But I also wonder how brands exert gravity, which leads to other brands, which leads to shopping mall success.
We all know how important anchor tenants are, how a Woolies or a Checkers (maybe even a Pick n Pay) basically get people to come in and thus pay a lower rental per square metre.
Without them, the little luggage shop, or that slightly odd but always interesting cookware store just doesn’t stand a chance.
Generally speaking, the rule of thumb for malls in South Africa was “build it and they will come”. People flocked to malls, so often as an escape from the daily reality of the rest of their lived experience.
It was exactly the same in places like New York or Chicago when department stores first opened about 150 years ago. At their peak, anyone could go into those stores and see a full orchestra playing, or find a place to occupy a child.
So I was fascinated by what seemed to be going wrong at Fourways Mall for so long.
I mean, seriously, one look at Fourways traffic during the week, or over the weekend for that matter, should convince you that if you can’t make money with a mall there, then you would be a very poor choice to arrange a non-sober gathering in an establishment that brewed beer.
But for years Fourways Mall was the place you’d avoid. I would go there for one reason only. There was a particular establishment involving trampolines that my kids loved. And, in fact, still love.
However, I still carry the trauma of trying to get a cavalcade of young kids from the parking lot into the place. When I raised this on The Money Show with one of the people now running the place, he knew immediately what my problem was: you had to walk across a busy road, complete with parking booms, to get from your car to the mall.
At the time the mall was battling, its vacancy rate was rising. Once, after ensuring my kids were going both up and down safely, I went off for a wander.
I came across two telltale signs of trouble. Passages that were sometimes slightly dark, and cardboard boxes flat on the ground to mop up water that had fallen from the roof.
I haven’t been there since. But it does seem to have all changed.
On Friday, Accelerate, part owners of Fourways, told the JSE – rather proudly, I hope – that they had been able to increase footfall (the number of people coming through every week) by 20%. And their trading density (revenue per square metre) was up 8.6%.
At the same time, their vacancy rate had dropped from 16% to 9%, and the owners reckon they’ll get that down to 4% in the near future.
By any metric, that’s an impressive turnaround. Sean Summers must be taking notes.
Fourways Mall also appears to be doing well to bring brands that people will go to. Places like Tashas and The Pantry, brands that have become hugely aspirational by not being cheap, are going there too.
Fourways Mall has decided what its market is, and it’s going for it.
You could suggest that the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town is doing the same thing. They’ve recently announced they’re expanding their dock for superyachts. Yes, the kind of thing that your average Putin confidant might have.
I get what they’re doing, and obviously they want that kind of customer. Who wouldn’t.
But I suspect there is a cost.
A couple of weeks ago on Cape Talk, Amy MacIver made the point that most of the shops there just didn’t speak to her anymore, they were simply too expensive.
And in fact, from what I hear, most of them are not South African names anyway. It’s really becoming more of a mall you would find in Monaco or perhaps even Ibiza.
That’s great for those people who will shop there, but I think you might draw away from your geographic constituency at your peril. Yes, there is a migratory class of people with loads of foreign currency, and yes, there should be a place for them in Cape Town.
But they don’t stick around. While the people in Cape Town do. And to alienate them might seem an acceptable cost now but will be a terrible disaster later.
Fourways Mall used to have a sort of brand. As a place that couldn’t attract the brands that matter. And thus people didn’t want to go there.
It’s turned that around, by showing that it cares for its shoppers.
I hope V&A doesn’t go in the opposite direction. DM