Retail – ready for the future
Earlier this year, I was fortunate to attend the NRF Retail Week conference in New York. NRF is the world’s largest retail conference and expo, with 40,000 attendees, 18,000 retailers and 800 exhibitors from 99 countries. It was an incredible experience to participate in the conference and certainly got me thinking about the opportunities ahead for us, and what we need to focus on to deliver on our targets.
“Challenge yourself to be unexpected for your customers while being true to your DNA.”
This was quoted by one of the presenters, Neela Montgomery from US retailer Crate and Barrel, and is what we need to keep reminding ourselves. Retail is changing, it’s evolving, but retail when it works, when it clicks for the customer it is more alive and relevant than ever.
Retail has always been an evolving industry. Change is a constant for us. For decades, retail has been progressing and we have been listening, learning and adapting to the needs of our customers. This is more important now than it ever has been as the retail sector continues to undergo structural change.
We need to challenge ourselves to continue listening, learning and adapting for the customer.
The retail asset is still key
Shopping centres are now a destination. Interactions with our customers and communities are not just transactional, but also experience based – we have the opportunity to make people feel something every time they step into one of our centres. The future of retail is about creating places that people feel pulled towards because of what it represents as much as what it contains.
We often talk about our retail assets as a TV station. What programs have we got running? Are they in the right time slots? Are we promoting the programs effectively? What is the new trend we need to be bringing in to capture that new demographic? A retail asset is never complete, it is always evolving and we can’t forget that.
Our customers continue to demonstrate their desire for more curated activations and offers, tailoring unique experiences for the local community – including innovative in-centre features, tech-integrated activities and sustainability led initiatives to enhance their everyday shopping experience.
Recently in Townsville we hosted our first ‘parklet’ event, encouraging the urban renewal and activation of an adjoining site. Made popular in San Francisco, parklets are designed as a public place for passers-by to relax and enjoy the atmosphere and amenities at hand.
Each Thursday evening over a couple of weeks our pop-up parklet came alive with free fun and entertainment for all ages. The activated space not only saw increased evening visitation but highlighted Stockland Townsville as a place that everyone can go to socialise, connect and belong, and this is just one of the many ways we’re facilitating experiences for our customers.
Blurring the lines of physical and digital
While Australians love their online offering, the reality is many of us still love to purchase in-store – but the store experience needs to deliver above the expectations of our customers.
The emergence of Click and Collect is a great example of where the physical and digital are merging, and we all know it’s growing as a concept and preference across centres.
For many shoppers, researching and shopping online is convenient and fun, waiting for the item and dealing with shipping and delivery is not – especially during key times such as Christmas.
Overall, retailers who have embraced Click and Collect are doing better than those who haven’t. Consequently, it’s become a priority for landlords to look at how they can best support the ‘last mile’ needs of their customers.
One way we are evolving to support this trend is through partnering with Amazon. Last year Stockland was the first Australian property company to offer Amazon Locker, a secure, self-service kiosk for parcel pickups.
Amazon Locker provides customers with the flexibility to pick up a package at a convenient time, rather than having it delivered to a home or business address.
Offering Amazon Locker in Stockland retail town centres provides greater convenience for our customers who are not home for the delivery of their purchase and ensures they can pick up at a time that suits them, in our centre.
This partnership is one of the many ways we are curating our offering to what our customers really want. We view online shopping on platforms such as Amazon as an extension of what our retail town centres can provide customers.
Time to thrive not just survive
During this time of immense change and disruption for our industry it is easy to go into survival mode. Adding a website here, making sure there is a social media presence over there. Successful operators will continue to get ahead by being one step ahead by anticipating the changes to come. They will not just survive but thrive.
One way Stockland is adapting for future change is our investment in innovation.
Our customers continue to demonstrate their desire for innovative in-centre features, tech-integrated amenities and convenience led-initiatives to enhance their everyday shopping experience. It is integral that Australian shopping centres continue to evolve and adapt to retailer, customer and global demands.
Recently we partnered with Australian start up BindiMaps, an innovative company revolutionising the way people who are blind or vision impaired experience large, indoor spaces with an app that provides navigation in indoor locations, like shopping centres.
Stockland Wetherill Park was the first large indoor public space to trial the BindiMaps technology. Using a network of Bluetooth beacons installed throughout the indoor environment, BindiMaps applies everyday language to guide users via their smart phones to their destinations throughout the centre.
We’ve rolled the technology out at Stockland Burleigh Heads and Rockhampton is next in line, with more to follow.
The innovative wayfinding system has already been a huge success, opening up a whole new world of discovery for customers with a vision impairment.
It’s all about the community
The town centre has always played a role in community connection. Over time, successful centres have been those able to attract customers from different backgrounds and stages of life, for different reasons, and encourage them to spend time in the centre.
At Stockland, we strongly believe that our town centres across Australia should be accessible to all people and have continued our commitment to creating inclusive places for the community.
The recent devastating Australian bushfires brought this sense of community to the fore, with some of our local centres becoming shelters and drop off points for supplies.
We are passionate about our purpose to create ‘a better way to live’ and have a long-standing commitment to work with the community, building vibrant and thriving places for people to shop, work and live, now and into the future.
We were proud to have the opportunity to give back both from a grass-roots local level through our retail centres through our annual CARE grants program, and recently through a $500,000 donation to organisations supporting the relief, recovery and rebuilding efforts following the Australian bushfires, including the Foundation for Regional and Rural Renewal (FRRR) and other charity organisations.
Our annual CARE Grants program, which has just been launched for 2020, is one of the ways we support our communities. This year Stockland will once again award up to $300,000 to organisations across the country to support local community-building initiatives and programs. The CARE grants enable us to recognise and invest in local community groups who make such a difference to the social fabric of where we live, work, shop and play, now and into the future.
2020 and beyond
We believe the future of retail is about creating places that are at the heart of communities, provide exceptional convenience and offer tailored and unique experiences for customers.
We feel confident in the future of retail in Australia and being a part of its evolution. As we look to the year ahead, Stockland will be embracing this disruption and continuing our clear strategy to position our portfolio for the future, via a focus on our three Cs – Community, Convenient and Curated.
About Stockland
Stockland (ASX: SGP) was founded in 1952 and has grown to become Australia’s largest diversified property group – owning, developing and managing a large portfolio of shopping centres, residential communities, retirement living villages, office and industrial assets. Stockland was recognised by the S&P Dow Jones Sustainability Indices as the global real estate sector leader for 2015-16, demonstrating world leadership across the areas of stakeholder engagement, customer relationship management, supply chain management, biodiversity and climate change strategy. Stockland was recognised as the Regional Sector Leader for Listed, Australian, Diversified Property Companies in the 2015 GRESB Report.
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