Connect Retail Webinar: Curating the Tenant Mix Will Be Key to the Shopper Experience

At the (presumably) tail-end of a pandemic that largely obliterated foot traffic volume during 2020, the retail sector is continuing to grow “at a very fast clip, in my opinion,” said Anjee Solanki, national director of retail services at Colliers. This momentum is due partly to the buildup and release of pent-up demand as COVID-19 kept shoppers away. Year to date, the sector has seen 55 million square feet of net absorption and there’s 50 million square feet of construction in the pipeline. 

Solanki shared her insights as one of three experts participating in Connect CRE’s Fall Retail 2021 Update Webinar, now available for on-demand replay. Moderated by Daniel Ceniceros, Connect CRE’s founder and CEO, the discussion illuminated the vantage point from three different perspectives: Solanki on the services side, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s Bo Okoroji on the ownership side and BümoWork CEO Joan Nguyen on the tenant side. 

“It’s great to see footfall coming back,” Solanki said, and Okoroji, VP of investment and divestment at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, concurred. “We’re definitely starting to see the impact” of greater foot traffic within the company’s portfolio, he observed. “We’re getting very close to being at pre-pandemic levels at most centers, and have exceeded foot traffic levels at others.” 

Along with providing a take on the current state of retail, and malls in particular, the panelists also looked at where the sector is going—and more to the point, where it needs to go. The experience of BümoWork in opening its first retail location served as a case in point. 

A coworking space with licensed childcare onsite, BümoWork signed on as a Westfield Century City tenant in 2019, with plans to open in early 2020. “And then the pandemic hit,” said Nguyen, who recalled updating the decal with the space’s opening date every month. 

This meant pivoting to address the changed circumstances. “We spent 2020 going digital-first, which created a flywheel effect,” Nguyen said.  

This in turn elevated Bümowork’s real estate story, because after creating an “online fan base,” the team found that when the Century City location finally opened, “there was a lot of excitement around it.” A TikTok video of the ribbon-cutting drew about seven million views. That excitement extended to real estate partners as well as potential consumers. 

Solanki weighed in that not only is Bümowork’s concept “brilliant,” but so is the ownership strategy of adding it as an amenity to retail centers. It increases foot traffic, and “makes you feel as though you’re living in this amazing local community,” she said. 

At Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, “we’re really looking to reinvent our tenant mix and pushing the overall experience at our centers,” said Okoroji. “And that happens with the ability to activate space with alternative uses. Pushing our tenant mix in that direction is what allows the experience to happen.”  

He pointed out that for local and regional owners, curating this mix is more of a challenge. It’s a matter of balancing the proportion of regional brands with national, creditworthy tenants. Because of the strength and scale of the Westfield portfolio, the company is able to make bets on digitally native brands, as well as local and regional brands. 

Going forward, curation will be increasingly important for retail owners, Solanki said. Differentiation is a key element in creating the tenant mix, curating center-by-center for that market and community, “so it’s not ‘Everywhere USA, every mall looks the same.’ ” 

Click here for on-demand replays of the webinar.