Open malls, a new shopping experience

Malls with central atrium, corridors, lobbies and indoors are going to be passé soon. And India, being a shopkeepers’ nation, offers a huge potential and scope for experiments in retail. Open mall concept is a new concept coming into India. Abroad, the concept is quite popular and successful. In spite of high rentals and space constraints, prime focus remains the popularity and acceptance of such malls.

Concept

A regular mall has its own basic infrastructure. But, the concept of an open mall is different from traditional or regular malls in many ways. Mr N V Sivakumar, Leader retail practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers, says, “Open mall takes shopping and entertainment to a new level. It offers large and dedicated spaces to retailers and customers alike. Unlike a regular mall, which has everything under one roof, this one is more like a high street within a mall itself. The basic shopping area is expanded out.” Elaborating on the concept, Mr Gurpreet S Randhawa says, “Open mall or strip mall or plaza is an open shopping area with shops laid out in rows. The interesting aspect about such a concept is that it’s quite similar to the ‘high street’. But, it is much more organised and has all the facilities that a mall offers. Generally, open malls are single-floor shopping malls and there is ample parking space available in front of each shop. Sidewalks connect the various zones of the open mall. Typically, open malls may range from 5,000 to 10,000 sq.ft area.”

Mr Pradeep Seth, CMD, Stadia Infrastructure Projects Pvt. Ltd,  explains the concept, “Open malls would be large developments sprawling over 10 to 30 acres of land consisting in ‘million plus sq. ft’ of constructed space staggered with various building blocks facing open gallerias, piazzas, landscaped parks, water bodies etc compared to a traditional mall in which shops facing a central atrium. These open areas also help in cutting down the maintenance costs viz. common area air conditioning cost that would give a better edge for retailers to survive.”

Differentiating factor

Open malls are different from the existing malls. Highlighting the difference between them, Mr Amit Bagaria, Chairman and CEO, Asipac Group, says, “The difference between an open mall and an enclosed mall is that, an enclosed mall is fully of indoors with lobbies, atriums and corridors, which are air-conditioned spaces whereas, in an open mall, you walk outdoors from shop to shop.” Talking about positive points of an open mall, Mr Randhawa says, “Existing malls in India are either first and second generation shopping areas. Due to paucity of developed shopping areas, most of the malls have today similar configuration and tenant mix. However, open malls offer more ‘breathing space’ for consumers and, hence, will be able to connect better with shoppers.”

Shopping experience

To stay ahead and maximise footfalls, any new mall tries to offer something innovative that would attract greater number of customers. Coming up of a new concept in malls brings in a new kind of shopping experience and shoppers would have different reasons of coming to such malls. Commenting on the attention-grabbing feature, Mr Seth says, “Major attractions to the shopper would be more of everything. These malls would become more of attraction centres than merely a shopping experience. They are expected to increase the average stoppage time for a shopper by three to four hours, which means more of shopping and more of entertainment, all in all, a whole day of picnic.” Adding to it, Mr Randhawa says, “Imagine a shopping place where there is no clutter, not much noise and no cacophony and where your entire family can still spend the entire day shopping, eating and being entertained and get back home comfortably. Open malls will offer a completely different experience to consumers.”

Successful abroad

Open mall as a concept has been quite popular abroad. Such malls are quite popular in US, Canada, Australia, Israel, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and also some countries in South-East Asia. Elaborating on the popularity, Mr Randhawa says, “Open malls have been a rage abroad. But, due to lack of space inside the main cities, such facilities are located a little away from main city. Also, a lot of such open malls also have been converted into factory shopping areas. If you visit the Clarks village in Street, England, you would experience a completely different shopping mood. There are shops laid out in a beautifully landscaped area with a fair mix of all product categories. There is ample focus on entertainment and eating also. It makes the destination a fun place where the families come and enjoy themselves as if they have come for picnic.”

Expected shopping behaviour

The target customers would remain the same- be it for existing malls or open malls. The difference would lie mainly in the shopping experiences that these malls provide. As these malls would be more like a picnic spot and the infrastructure would be different from  existing malls’, Mr Bagaria says, “Currently, bargain hunters go to popular semi-high streets which are full of factory outlet shops and other bargain shops such as Marathahalli in Bangalore, VIP Road in Kolkata, Mahipalpur and Mehrauli in Delhi and Mid-Parel in Mumbai.  These places do not have proper food and entertainment outlets or other facilities for children.  Since open malls offer a host of non-shopping experiences as well, and since you are walking in an internal corridor (even though it is open to the sky), there is no fear of getting run over by speeding buses or running motorists.  So, in my mind, Indian families would love the open mall experience.” Talking on the same aspect, Mr Seth says, “With such malls being planned in India, mall developers will try to innovate various ways to make their developments unique and attractive. For example, some malls would focus on an entertainment park whereas some would be hardcore multi-brand shopping centres. Our company, Stadia is developing such malls on all major highways of northern India. Our focus is on discounts and we intend to locate, design and brand our malls in a way that retailers can run year round discount schemes for customers. Dimension wise, our malls vary from 10 to 20 acres, and each of them include 150 to 200 brand stores, large anchor formats, entertainment parks, multiplexes, food courts, restaurants, food streets and integrated hotels. With an option to purchase goods at a cheaper rate by 40 to 50 per cent, we expect our malls to draw much more customers than traditional malls.” Adding to this point, Mr Randhawa says, “Consumers are evolving daily. It is the need of the hour to develop and adopt such innovative concepts which can serve as a differentiator and break the clutter. With the onset of open mall shopping, consumers would get variety of shopping areas with totally different service offering.”

Future of such malls

It would be too early to say anything positive or negative about this concept. Yet, industry professionals have views on the success and failure. Mr Randhawa puts across that such malls already exist in India though the quality of merchandise and retail stores is questionable. Commenting on the negative aspect of such concept, Mr Bagaria says, “I do not see a bright future for such malls because of extremely high land costs in 90 per cent of the top 50 cities in India and also in the suburbs.  The open mall concept works if land is cheap.  A retailer cannot give a bargain to a shopper unless he gets a bargain on the rents and the developer cannot give a bargain on the rent unless he gets a bargain on the land.” Seeing the brighter side of the concept, Mr Seth says, “Given the rapid growth of retail in India and the youngest population in the world and looking forward to various new and fresh ideas, we feel that such malls would prove out to be a huge success.” No matter how Indian consumers respond to such shopping destinations, one thing, for sure, is that these malls would be a relief from enclosed shopping malls.