No sooner are the decorations back in their box is it time for centres to start planning their festive displays for the next year. Hannah Prevett unwraps the trends hitting malls in 2009
Christmas without decorations is like turkey without cranberry sauce: it just doesn’t work. For shopping centres, putting their best foot forward when it comes to Christmas decorations, is absolutely vital. As the credit crunch shows no sign of abating and consumer confidence continues to falter, malls are likely to be under increasing pressure to up footfall for Christmas 2009. After all, an impressive festive display could make the difference between a customer visiting one centre or checking out what the competition has to offer.
With her background in the fashion industry, Caroline Gamester, managing director of Christmas decoration company LDJ Design & Display, is confident her company can ensure any shopping centre is well-dressed in 2009, despite recession fears taking their toll. “Christmas is about making people feel a lot better about things, so it needs to feel a bit warm and a bit different to the rest of the year,” she says.
As a result, Gamester is predicting warm, rich and luxurious colours, incorporating chocolate browns and gold, will feature heavily in decorations, creating a sense of Christmas while forgetting about the cold outside. Other trends to expect this year include bright, intense and playful colours like hot pinks, orange and turquoise to create a sense of energy and vitality and at the other end of the spectrum, cooler tones and themes to give an icy and frosty feel to the centre.
However, this last glacial trend won’t work just anywhere, Gamester warns. “It’s only going to be very high end smaller centres that would be able to look at something like this, but I think it’s important we show that this is a big trend in terms of interior and fashion.”
For Wendy Ford, joint managing director at Springfield, warmly coloured displays will also be prominent this year, incorporating browns, reds and golds. “It’s only a very brave centre that can go to the lime green,” she confides. Also, in times when retailers and shopping centres are feeling the pinch, a return to the traditional colour schemes is perfectly acceptable. “In money conscious times the public do enjoy red and gold; I think it will probably be a safe Christmas,” says Ford.
However, for Sharon Peterson, business development manager at Hamburg-headquartered First Christmas, decorations in shopping centres are not something to be subjected to short term trends, “at least not in the way that some of our competitors think that each year the Christmas decorations in shopping centres should coincide with the latest colours of fashion for the year.”
Christmas is a traditional time of year where the centres are going to be experiencing their highest period of income/turnover,” Peterson says. “The centres need to appeal to as close to 100 per cent of the public and this is not going to be the case if shrill fashionable colours are to be the main theme of the decorations.”
Despite having being established in continental Europe for over ten years, First Christmas is a relatively new player to enter the already-crowded UK Christmas decoration marketplace. However, it is already making waves, having been responsible for decking out three of the largest centres in the UK and Ireland for Christmas 2008: Westfield in London, Victoria Square in Belfast and Blanchardstown in Dublin.
Like Ford, Peterson agrees that during times of economic uncertainty the public are looking for reassurance from Christmas displays. They are “looking to experience a Christmas atmosphere that gives them a sense of security and reassurance which is generally emotionally linked to their own childhood memories of Christmas,” she claims.
This doesn’t mean, however, that traditional is the same as old-fashioned. “We believe that traditional themes should be constant and recognisable but that these need to be given either a modern interpretation or should be supported by at least one modern highlight in the centre.”
This view is shared by Springfield’s Ford who points to a trend towards individual statement pieces which are “bigger, bolder and have the wow factor”. For Christmas 2008, one of Springfield’s customers, Cheshire Oaks at Ellesmere Port, opted for an artificial tree of almost 28m to be erected at the heart of the scheme.
Like Peterson, Adam Nicholson, business director at Imagination Seasonal Displays, believes there is more to Christmas than adherence to fashion trends. “Aesthetics are important but we shouldn’t get wrapped up in what is perceived as this year’s hue or shade,” he says. It is more important that the festive displays are tailored absolutely to the centre’s individual requirements. “Most towns have more than one shopping centre and each will have its own often completely different requirement so it’s about getting it right for them, dependent on clientele, aspirations and budget.
“Far too often we see schemes that miss the point of Christmas decorations – they are there to engender the feeling of Christmas by enhancing the customers’ visit to the centre, not to win contemporary. design awards”
One of the only trends that will be of significance in 2009 will be value for money, says Nicholson. “Budgets are under greater pressure than we’ve seen for many years so centres need to know they’re getting high-quality, effective displays that keep the public happy, but also, more importantly than ever, the tenants.”
Cost effectiveness is certainly likely to be at the forefront of centre managers’ minds when it comes to decking out their malls this year. Technology can often play a crucial part in ensuring that centres squeeze every last penny out of their investment. Certainly one of the technologies enabling centres to save money and reduce their carbon footprint while doing so, is LED lighting.
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While LED lighting is generally more expensive at the point of purchase than traditional filament lighting, running costs and longevity make it much better value for money in the long term. “I think LED is going to become more and more popular because people see the benefits both from the carbon footprint point of view and also because the longevity of the lights means they are ultimately more cost-effective,” says Gamester.
LED lighting is also often more durable because since LEDs do not have a filament, they are not damaged under circumstances when a regular incandescent bulb would be broken. Added to which, because they are solid, LED bulbs hold up well to jarring and bumping. All in all, LED bulbs last up to ten times as compact fluorescents, and far longer than typical incandescents.
Added to this, further advances in intelligent lighting technology could also change the way shopping malls decorate their centres at Christmas, says Gamester. “However, I don’t think this year people will have the budget to spend more on something that is very, very new,” she continues. “Rather than expensive lighting it will be all about the feel good factor.”
Another area where technological advancements are likely to have an impact is children’s entertainment. Last year, speaking to Shopping Centre, Paul Dart of James Glancy Design predicted that there would be fewer grottos in 2008, saying that they fail to encourage children’s imagination. While Gamester agrees with this sentiment in principle she says that more exciting, technology driven options are going to be out of people’s price range this year.
“I am not sure people will have the budget to spend on more interactive and therefore more costly items in their shopping centre. In the long term, children are getting more sophisticated than they ever have been before – they’ve all got computers and Playstations – so what we provide for them has to be more sophisticated than it would have been five or ten years ago.”
While Springfield itself doesn’t become involved in the intricacies of grotto management, joint managing director Wendy Ford says that specialist companies are having to work harder to ensure they produce a higher standard of grotto. “We have probably seen fewer grottos but they’ve been done to a higher standard,” concedes Ford.
The dawn of new technology is also good news for those trying to reduce their carbon footprint. LED lighting has now been widely adopted for use in Christmas displays because it looks more impressive, requires less energy and is more durable. Gamester believes LED lighting has the potential to replace all fluorescent and incandescent bulbs and at LDJ they are halfway there – in 2004 less than 5 per cent of LDJ’s displays used LEDs and in 2008 less than 5 per cent used incandescent.
“This transition has dramatically reduced energy consumption and helped reduce harmful carbon emissions associated with electricity generation. Increased lifespan and durability has also reduced the amount of waste going to landfill. It’s a domino effect,” says Gamester.
However, there is a careful balance to strike says Gamester. While LDJ’s managing director is keen to prove her environmental credentials and is aware of customers’ ever-tightening belts, it is clear she will not compromise on quality as a result. “We think we are buying cost effectively but I think it’s important we buy the right products. To reduce the quality of materials would be the wrong thing.”
Sure enough, despite the credit crunch and heightened environmental awareness, customer expectations are always high and malls risk losing out to neighbouring centres if they fail to impress. Barbara Winston, centre manager at Wakefield’s Ridings Centre says that she will not be disappointing customers or tenants this year, and is already putting together an impressive display. “It’s what the regular shoppers in the Ridings Centre have seen and have come to expect and you don’t want to disappoint them. Added to which, you want to support your retailers as much as you can so you have to give it as good a bash as you can.”
With technologies such as LED lighting, reduced costs are a happy by-product of reducing emissions. However, sometimes environmentally friendly products are not always so kind to the purse, admits Ford. “Often the more environmentally friendly products are more expensive so although I think we’ll try to maintain our ethical leads, there may be choices to be made.” And for companies like Springfield, maintaining their competitive edge is key. “There’s nothing to stop customers going to somebody else who’s cheaper because they’re not honouring the ethical side of things.”
However, as the credit crunch continues to bite, many shopping centres have more pressing concerns at Christmas than the size of their carbon footprint. In such cases, there are companies that can help by offsetting centres’ carbon footprints for them through partnerships with eco-charities. LDJ, for example, works with a charity called Converging Worlds to offset emissions meaning its clients can say their Christmas has been truly green. Meanwhile, Imagination works with the Carbon Footprint organisation in offsetting CO2 production, which can be done for as little as £100.
The providers are doing their best to cater for companies with an environmental conscience, but the rest is down to shopping centres themselves to secure a brighter, cleaner, greener and most cost-conscious Christmas. “All of us in the industry have to work together to achieve that,” says Gamester.
