Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. As we navigate our way through the continually evolving retail landscape, I cannot help but think about where we have come from. Such as how our successes as a shopping centre owner and manager can help to shape our current strategies, yet how we need to continually think beyond the present to underpin ongoing success in the future.
Over recent years, GPT has been focused on better understanding our customers, bringing the best retail offerings to market and enriching the experiences within our centres for the consumer of the future. The need to continually evolve our assets is critical to our future success, as is the need to understand how customers are changing what they are looking for in a rapidly evolving retail landscape. This today requires shopping centre managers and retailers to be agile, flexible and quick to market.
As the market continues to remain challenging, we need to ensure we have the most relevant and inspiring retail offer and create environments for our retailers to thrive. Reinventing and reinvesting in our assets has never before been more important than today, while ensuring we stay connected to the customer and the community. Today’s success is in our depth of understanding of customers wants and needs, and responding with immediacy in a fast-moving market. They have so many options available to them of where and how to spend their disposable dollar, meaning it has never been so critical to partner with retailers and create an offering that will attract and retain customers.
GPT’s Melbourne Central shopping centre is a prime example of an asset that has seen success over the past three decades by continually evolving and adapting to the Melbourne Central customer’s needs. It encapsulates the key qualities GPT believes will help us navigate through this period of a challenging retail environment.
Invest in the best place
Celebrating and maintaining the history and heritage of Melbourne Central has been critical to the asset’s success and its connection with its customers and community. Spanning two entire city blocks, Melbourne Central boasts several unique architectural features – none more famous than the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa’s 20 storey high glass cone that houses the heritage listed Coops Shot Tower. Complementing this historic landmark is the giant Marionette watch hanging in Tower Square, which famously marks every hour with a rendition of the iconic ‘Waltzing Matilda’.
The 130-year-old tower serves as the central meeting place within the centre, and is one of Melbourne’s most ‘Instagrammed’ buildings. It is unlikely the workers at the shot tower in 1889 would have ever imagined it would one day be used for a virtual reality experience where visitors would wear headsets to recreate the original shot tower environment. We recognise that it will continue to be reimagined and used in new and exciting ways by future generations.
Originally built with Japanese department store Daimaru as the major tenant in 1991, the centre underwent a $250 million redevelopment in 2002 upon their departure. It was connected to the Melbourne Central train station below, and north-south lanes were carved out across the block (as well as new diagonal cut-throughs that Melburnians had always desired).
From 2018 onwards, GPT continues to invest in the 11 precincts across the centre, with a focus to continue delivering a place; a destination in its own right.
The shopping centre of the future needs to foster a sense of wellness and connectedness, a place that can facilitate a feeling of community, joy, relaxation and entertainment. Shopping centres are still people’s primary leisure destinations beyond the home, and research we conducted last year construed customers will look for a place where they can spend time and money, that promotes this sense of wellness and community. A place where they come to shop for both pleasure and necessity, but also to eat out, socialise and exercise in a vibrant social space for which they have an affinity.
In late 2018, Josh Muir’s ‘Kulin Mural’ was unveiled as a permanent artwork on the side of the centre’s iconic shot tower. This is an import step for the centre’s art strategy and GPT Reconciliation Action Plan, which has a remit to increase the profile of First Nation art in Melbourne. There is art by specific artists throughout the centre, some of it hidden behind corners, to provide some surprise and delight and reinforce what Melbourne is all about.
Last year also saw a collaboration with Disney to celebrate 90 years of Mickey Mouse involving an art installation and pop-up store at the centre, saw the classic Disney character reimagined by local and international artists. Transforming a back of house area into a vibrant customer experience, the art installation was a massive hit across multiple generations of visitors.
An underused space on the rooftop of Melbourne Central was repurposed as the Melbourne CBD’s first glamping location (St Jerome’s Hotel), which generated such immediate success that it ran for more than two years with national and international coverage. Building on the initial success of the reimagined space, a new concept, the Reunion Island Pool Club, will launch with a design to feel like an exclusive pool club. Mixed with the egalitarian vibes of a public pool, customers will be able to take part in rooftop yoga, pilates, meditation and massage during the early-morning, but in the afternoons and evenings it will be the place to be for an after-work drink, quick dip or both.
These activations are a small sample of the tangible examples in which Melbourne Central markets itself to both existing and new audiences, driving visitors to a destination that transcends the traditional retail offering.
Investment in best product
As an iconic landmark, flagship stores and first to market brands have become a key point of difference for Melbourne Central. By focusing on the need to understand the customer and international trends, Melbourne Central delivers and evolves a retail offering that consistently remains relevant, continually providing a sense of discovery for the customer.
So how to compete and respond with online? Create the best retail mix, with brands that are first to market or new concepts that respond to customers’ needs and wants while providing an element of surprise. GPT have a steadfast willingness to collaborate with retail partners to find the right space or to work together to develop the right concept. Relationships with our retailers is a key focus, as we work in partnership to deliver the right experience for our customers that are adopting new technologies at unprecedented rates.
With emphasis on creating a point of difference, the significant refurbishment over the past five years has been driven by an ambition to bring more relevant retailers; particularly dining, lifestyle and health & beauty brands wanting to open their first Melbourne and even Australian stores. The centre has welcomed 15 first-to-market retailers, helping lead to the more than 10% increase in sales productivity at Melbourne Central.
Case in point is Melbourne Central’s response to the strong demand for beauty products and experiences, by which it cemented itself as Melbourne’s leading beauty precinct. After already becoming home to the international cosmetics giant Sephora’s first Melbourne store three years ago, in 2018 Melbourne Central welcomed the opening of the South Korean cosmetics retailer Innisfree’s first Australian store and Mecca Maxima’s newest Victorian flagship store to massive crowds.
Other first to market retailers, such as, DJI drones, Secret Sneaker, and Litmus Labs, further bolster the centre’s credibility to partner with new concepts and successfully deliver a new experience and sense of discovery for customers that can only be accomplished within bricks-and-mortar retail.
As part of the Menzies Place repositioning, we will launch Worksmith ELLA. It’s a game-changing food and beverage focused coworking space that develops new hospitality offerings and works with landlords to curate their own space. The first of its kind within a shopping centre, the space has been remixed to feature an on-premise lab for drinks professionals and liquor companies to experiment and prepare for events, four semi-enclosed private offices as well as a casual area with couches, bar, media room, and communal desks catering for up to 70 people. Unique to the Australian market, this is just one of the new retailers in the remixed precinct to give curious Melbourne commuters something they have never before experienced.
Invest in community
More than just a shopping centre, Melbourne Central has become a place for people to visit and connect; for them to feel connected to. This is not a coincidence – it’s a result of enormous investment in both local and international art, activations and experiences that transcend the space beyond simply being somewhere to shop. Melbourne Central is committed to supporting the community around them, which is becoming more and more ethically conscious.
BeeKeeper Parade is a social business that creates products that change the world, do not harm the environment and uses its brand to inspire positive change in the world. Specialising in creating an array of backpacks, bags and wallets out of recycled materials, the eco-friendly business is committed to helping children in Cambodia, providing education and resources.
The STREAT café at Melbourne Central is a social enterprise that provides hospitality training, work experience and employment to homeless and disadvantaged youth. As younger generations and shoppers of the future show more appetite for socially sustainable business, it is critical to evolve to match the ever-changing needs of these consumers. Inspiring customers while simultaneously supporting the communities with which they connect has helped drive success at Melbourne Central.
To remain competitive, shopping centre owners and managers need to understand customers more than ever, and more than ever we have the ability to do this. However, it is futile to invest in analysing data if we are not going to invest in the asset, and to evolve the offering so that it remains relevant. We place importance on first-to-market retailers, and creating places and experiences that inspire and excite people. Melbourne Central has done this in the past, but we won’t be looking backwards.
About GPT
The GPT Group is one of Australia’s largest diversified property groups and a top 50 ASX listed company by market capitalisation.
GPT owns and manages a $24 billion portfolio of prime shopping centres, offices and logistics assets across Australia.
The Group has a substantial investor base with more than 32,000 shareholders. GPT’s Retail portfolio includes 13 shopping centres that have a combined 940,000m2 of gross lettable area and more than 3,200 tenants.
Add comment