CEO OUTLOOK 2023: Stockland

e they contend with the latest global impact, cost of living pressures. While we continue to monitor consumer confidence and spending, many of our retailers are well-positioned to respondto the new trading environment following a strong bounce back after the travails of COVID-19. Between November’s Black Friday campaign and Boxing Day sales in December and January, many retailers saw customers returning to their physical stores and reported solid results. These retailers were ready and waiting to greet customers who were excited to leave the home for a bricks-and-mortar retail experience. With many retailers having used the past few years to improve their online digital experience, they were now able to engage in a truly omni-channel way with both new and existing customers. The heartbeat of the community For our part, we’ve loved seeing our customers returning to our centres for their daily essentials, services and, importantly, for dining and socialising with family and friends as they reconnect with much-loved brands, and each other. Despite the uncertain headwinds, we are optimistic about the resilience of our Town Centre portfolio with its focus on suburban and regional locations, providing a curated and convenient essentials-based mix of retailers for our communities. Beyond the basic need to stock their pantries and fridges, our customers come to our centres for a sense of connection, and we have made it so by ensuring that our centres are accessible, inclusive, engaging and entertaining. Last year, we worked closely with experts and the local community to benchmark the disability inclusion and accessibility of several centres and better understand the customer experience from the perspectives of dignity, equity, and inclusion. This work continues across the portfolio involving partnerships and connection with specific customer groups. Our collaboration with Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect) on sensory maps gives customers with sensory processing differences, like autism, an opportunity to plan ahead before visiting new environments. In WA, we partnered with The Fathering Project to host workshops on Father’s Day that created positive connections between fathers, father figures and children and provide a forum for fathers to connect – all leading to a more resilient community. Fathering Project, Stockland Baldivis Silver lining of omni-channel The silver lining of the lockdowns was the ability of retailers to think about their businesses differently and adapt to maintain a connection with their customers – whether it was a café preparing ready-to-eat takeaway meals or a fashion retailer pivoting to casual ‘working from home’ wear. Retailers with a strong online presence thrived while traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers saw the need to catch-up and strengthen their digital channels to meet the customer where they were – at home. Stockland continues to evolve its offering as part of the retail business’ vision to be a leading partner of choice, helping retailers reach local audiences both in-store and online and drive customers back to the store. Delivering value for retailers includes helping them to discover sales opportunities. This can be achieved by encountering shoppers where they shop, on their terms. With about 19.3% of total retail spend online, our opportunity is to make our solutions more resilient and competitive. This year, we’re accelerating the roll-out of Stockland Marketplace – an online hyper-local platform for retailers to list their products for shoppers to find, browse, click and collect locally. Stockland Marketplace provides an opportunity for retailers to thrive beyond the traditional constraints of trading hours and physical retail space, reaching local customers when their doors are open and when they’re closed. For small to medium retailers, it helps them share interesting and unique local products to shoppers outside the usual trading area, giving them an extended audience and access to our website traffic and digital expertise. Stockland Marketplace Since 2020, Stockland’s Starter program has been helping businesses who haven’t operated in a shopping centre environment before trial a retail tenancy. The leap from an online or high street environment to a centre can feel overwhelming for small local businesses. With guidance across operations, marketing and finance, Starter is a collaborative program designed to support growing businesses take the first step towards a permanent lease. Whether it’s the Starter incubator program or Marketplace, the overriding objective is the same – we put the customer first and then help our partners connect with them through shared values and experiences. Experiences for young and the young-at-heart Customers will come back to us when they feel a connection to our town centres, and this connection is heightened when we create exciting places and experiences – from collaborations with local mural artists at Stockland Baldivis and Stockland Wendouree, to pop-up markets at Stockland Glendale. For the fourth time, we partnered with the Australian Museum on the Future Now exhibition, which last year travelled to town centres in NSW and Queensland. The interactive exhibition aligned with our aspirations for a more sustainable planet and showed, in a fun and educational format, how local communities could live more sustainably. Across the four centres, the travelling exhibition increased foot traffic by approximately +5% compared to the previous month, with more than 800 children visiting the exhibition as an organised school excursion or attending workshops. While we value initiatives that can be scaled across a number of our centres, we also value the chance to work with local groups on their initiatives to entertain and engage with customers young and old. For example, at Pop Up Park at Stockland Point Cook, friends and family can enjoy a range of free events involving local talent and suppliers ranging from kids yoga and live music to annual cultural celebrations like Diwali. Australian Museum Future Now exhibition Celebrating with campaigns For many of us in the sector, campaigns like Christmas, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day fuel our passion for retail. Our campaigns reflect the Stockland brand across our centres. They create buzz and activate spaces with entertainment and promotions. Whatever event the community is celebrating, Stockland is part of that experience. Food in Common is a campaign centred on the simple truth that sharing food fosters a deep connection between people. At our town centres, Food in Common comes to life with food retailers offering food sampling and other promotions, while activations reflect the cuisines and cultures of the community. Summer of Food and Winter of Food are our seasonal publications that are leveraged at the centres with cooking demonstrations, food education workshops and kids in the kitchen sessions during the school holidays. We have a great partnership with celebrity chef Miguel Maestre who adds an extra special ingredient to the campaigns with his passionate appearances. For more than 70 years, Stockland has been creating communities with our town centres cemented as the vibrant hubs of their regions. While this latest economic cycle will present many challenges, it will also offer opportunities. With the right focus on community and a high-quality and inclusive customer experience, we can support our tenants and partners throughout the next year and beyond. I look forward to working with the teams across Stockland’s portfolio and our retail partners in 2023.