Time to talk
Published: 18 January, 2006
Next month's BCSC shopping centre management conference in Edinburgh promises to be thought-provoking and entertaining
This year could fairly be said to mark the coming of age of the BCSC’s shopping centre management conference and exhibition. Delegate numbers are at record levels and the exhibition space was all but sold out six weeks before the event, which all goes to prove that the event has now become firmly established in the industry’s calendar.
Alan Thornton, senior account director at Donaldsons and joint conference chair alongside Land Securities’ retail operations manager Karen Saunders, is already in celebratory mood, forecasting that 600 delegates will assemble at Edinburgh’s International Conference Centre on Tuesday February 28.
“The challenge we’ve set ourselves is: ‘how do we improve the event year-on-year?’” he says. “This year we’ve chosen a theatrical theme under the banner of ‘In the Spotlight.’” This partly reflects Thornton’s own background, but he insists it is highly relevant to the role of the centre manager. “A centre manager is always in the spotlight,” he says. “They are under scrutiny from investors and retailers and they are always in the public spotlight.”
And to reinforce the theatrical theme the Oxford-based Creation theatre company – best known for staging Romeo & Juliet in BMW’s Cowley car plant – will be on hand to give the event a bit of sparkle. “We wanted the event to be more than just a succession of talking heads,” explains Saunders. “The theatrical element will be interwoven into the fabric of the conference.”
“And it’s not just fluff,” says Thornton. “Creation are very experienced in producing theatre in a business context, and that’s allowed us to win matched funding from the organisation Arts & Business.”
“Of course the conference is a great networking opportunity,” says Saunders. “Centre managers do often live in splendid isolation, especially those who work for smaller owners, and the conference is an opportunity for them to meet their peer group. But it’s an opportunity to learn as well. We want people to go away having learned something, as well as having made lots of useful contacts.”
And this is reflected in the conference programme. “We’ve tried to get people who can come at shopping centres from lots of different angles,” she says.
Opening the conference once the formalities are completed is Bridget Rosewell, founder and chair of Volterra Consulting. Rosewell was formerly one of the Chancellor’s ‘wise men’ and she will be trying to draw some conclusions from the contradictory signals about consumer confidence, particularly in the light of the better-than-expected Christmas trade.
She will be followed by one of the industry’s own who has gone on to bigger and better things: Jo Swinson was formerly marketing manager at spaceandpeople.com but left in May 2005 to fight the East Dunbartonshire seat for the Liberal Democrats. She succeeded in wresting the seat away from Labour, and has been in the Commons for nine months now.
Swinson will be combining her two roles to look at the political dimension of centre management, asking: “How can shopping centre managers develop a positive influence within the local political scene?”
Charles Landry, founder and director of Comedia, will be speaking on ‘The art of centre making.’ Landry is a leading expert in the use of culture as a catalyst for regeneration, advising cities as diverse as St Petersburg, Tblisi, Adelaide and Leicester on strategies to attract cultural industries.
And to round off the first plenary session, business guru Kevin Thompson – creator of the Action Man brand – will be exploring a culinary metaphor to describe a recipe for corporate success.
The afternoon will be given over to smaller workshops and delegates have the choice of 12 sessions covering a wide spectrum of topics. ATCM chief executive Simon Quin will explore whether Business Improvement Districts are the answer to financing the management of public areas. Deborah Owen-Ellis Clark, marketing director at Gunwharf Quays, will look at the customer experience of shopping centres.
Martin Taylor of Martin Taylor Associates will be running two sessions, one looking at the licensing issues surrounding entertainment in shopping centres and the other on designing out drug-related crime.
Pauline Guthrie, who is herself a wheelchair-user, will look at the practical implications of the Disability Discrimination Act, and will look at measures centres can take to enable and entice disabled people to become loyal and regular customers.
And to give the workshops a local flavour Nick Peel, centre director at East Kilbride, will chair a session entitled ‘Enemies at the Door’ looking at strategies Scottish centres can adopt to deal with the twin threats of Silverburn at Pollok and Ravenscraig, two million-sq ft-plus projects south of Glasgow.
Freelance broadcaster Rob Nothman will look at how centre managers can harness the media to their benefit, and two sessions will look at environmental issues: Mark Allison from Meadowhall will look at CSR best practice while Phil Steele, centre manager at the Bridges, Sunderland, will be asking whether being environmentally friendly is a non-affordable luxury or a cost-effective necessity.
One session that Karen Saunders highlights is confidence coach Emmanuel Aharoni from Emmanuel Aharoni & Associates on the power of positive thinking. “This one isn’t just for the delegates,” she says. “It’s something they can take back to their teams as well.”
Donaldsons’ retail research analyst Rosalind Pateman will make the case for even the smallest centres conducting research to know their customers better. She will look at techniques that can produce valid data on a limited budget.
And a session that’s particularly timely post-Castlepoint will be run by crisis management expert Diana Soltmann. The chief executive of the Flagship Group, she has advised companies on a wide range of potential and actual disasters. She advocates that every centre should have a crisis plan in place.
The second day’s plenary session is more focused on practical centre management issues than the first. First off is Ian Wallis, retail operations director at Ann Summers. “We must listen to and laugh with our customers and to do that we need to listen and laugh with our staff, encourage them to be themselves, give them confidence and great products and store environments,” he says. “In fact we have to take on many typically female personality traits.”
Next up is John Gater, managing director of restaurant chain Ma Potters. He will discuss the importance of working together with centre management from a restaurateur’s perspective.
Jonathan Doughty, chair of the BCSC customer care committee and group managing director of Coverpoint, will present the BCSC customer care awards. And in the final conference session Phil McArthur, director of leasing and marketing at Dubai Festival City, will present an insider’s view of the massive shopping centre development boom currently sweeping the Gulf.
Running in parallel with the conference is a trade exhibition with more than 40 stands from a wide range of suppliers and consultants. Among those exhibiting are C-Interactive, Calendar Club, FootFall, Shoppertainment, Photo-Me International, Ride on! Entertainment and Treasure Island Amusements.
“Research shows delegates value the exhibition,” says Thornton, “and it’s improving year-on-year.”
But it’s not all going to be hard work at Edinburgh. Two big events provide time to relax as well. On Monday February 27 a welcome party, sponsored by Springboard, will take place in the exhibition hall. “It’s partly there to encourage delegates to collect their badges early to ease the pressure on Tuesday morning,” admits Saunders.
And on the Tuesday night the Royal Museum in Edinburgh will be the venue for the conference dinner, sponsored by Photo-Me. It is themed as ‘black tie with a touch of tartan’ but as Thornton puts it: “the more kilts the better.”
The organisers have booked a cailidh band and they’ll be followed by a more conventional disco. Presumably Alan Thornton will be sporting Dale Winton’s spangly jacket for the latter rather than the former.
For those that can get up to Edinburgh earlier, two study tours have been laid on for Monday February 27. One takes in three malls outside Edinburgh city centre: Fort Kinnaird, the Gyle and Livingston. The other takes in Edinburgh waterfront including Ocean Terminal, the Royal Yacht Britannia and the new Scottish Parliament building.
But two delegates will be there even earlier. Scotland take on England at Murrayfield in the Six Nations on Saturday February 25, and the conference organisers held a draw for two early-bird bookers to receive tickets. Andrew Forrester, manager of the Kingdom shopping centre in Glenrothes and Erica Burlace, manager of the Abbeygate centre in Nuneaton were the winners and they’ll both be soaking up the atmosphere at Murrayfield. But it doesn’t look as though they’ll be cheering on the same team.
