One year on - St David’s in Cardiff was the biggest centre to open last year. As it approaches its first birthday how is it faring?
Published: 11 November, 2010
A year ago this month Land Securities and Capital Shopping Centres unveiled their extended St David’s shopping centre in Cardiff. Opening a million sq ft of retail space while the country was still in recession was never going to be easy. But a year on the picture is very different.
Before the end of October 2010 St David’s will welcome its 37 millionth visitor since opening. The existing centre typically attracted 22 million shoppers a year, and centre director Steven Madeley takes this alone as vindication for the massive investment that has gone into the extension.
“We know from our city centre partners that this hasn’t been achieved by cannibalising the rest of the city,” he says. And the new space has enabled the landlords to reposition the centre’s tenant mix and widen its appeal. “The centre has moved from a broad offer to something edgier. We haven’t alienated the core audience but our marketing has targeted areas where we were previously under-indexed.”
Research shows the St David’s catchment has been extended to places as far as 100 miles away. “We get shoppers from mid-Wales, who could just as easily go to Birmingham,” says Madeley, “And people also come across the bridge from England.”
To achieve this transformation, over 70 new stores have opened since the centre was launched – more than one a week. In the latest deals the Spanish retail giant Cortifiel is opening its Springfield womenswear format in a deal brokered through Land Securities’ Brand Empire initiative.
Monsoon is fitting out, and other new arrivals include G Star Raw, which has opened open a 6,251-sq ft store in the Grand Arcade, and Pulp which has taken 2,603 sq ft at 33 Town Wall South on the lower mall level.
Thomas Cook has taken a new 1,882-sq ft unit on the lower level of Grand Arcade even though it already has an existing store at the shopping centre. Modelzone, the UK’s largest model retailer, has taken a 2,269-sq ft store in the centre’s Town Wall South.
And the food offer continues to evolve. Spudulike is the latest arrival in the St David’s restaurant quarter, which currently has 18 restaurants across two levels.
Madeley is especially pleased with the way retailers have pulled out all the stops when it comes to store design, but he points out: “Cardiff has traditionally been one of the places where retailers tried new formats – it has a catchment that’s representative of the national population.”
The latest deals mean St David’s is 78 per cent let, although the picture is changing on a weekly basis. “In another year we’ll be almost there,” forecasts Madeley.
Inevitably there have been casualties, but Madeley insists: “Where retailers do fall away it’s been due to national issues and not a reflection of Cardiff or St David’s 2.”
But where units do become vacant, or are still waiting to be let for the first time, Madeley and his team are keen to avoid runs of dead frontage. “We use pop-up shops, vending machines and screens to animate the void units,” he says.
One of the keys to the success of the extension has been the John Lewis anchor store. At more than 250,000 sq ft it is the partnership’s biggest branch outside London and since launch it has been the responsibility of managing director Liz Mihill.
“It’s been a great year,” she says. Trade has exceeded expectations in fashion but not in homewares, although Mihill insists it is meeting revised targets overall. “Fashion’s done exceptionally well and home has grown steadily,” she says.
She believes there are two reasons for this. “Cardiff’s well-known for fashion,” she says, “but shoppers have become used to shopping out-of-town for home goods.”
And she also points out it’s a reflection of the new store itself. “Because of the amount of space we have we’ve been able to do things differently, and we’ve trialled a completely new fashion approach,” she says. “In the John Lewis world it was revolutionary but now it’s being rolled out into other shops.”
Catering is another important part of the John Lewis ethos, and in this area the Cardiff store is consistently in the top half of the store portfolio.
Mihill insists the St David’s branch has been an important step forward for the John Lewis brand. “It’s not borrowed money – the partners have invested £38m in being here and we’re here for the long term,” she points out. “And £4m of that was spent on recruiting 780 people. Of these 155 were straight off the dole queue.”
And she says that the relationship with the centre owners has to be about more than property if it’s to work. “For me one of the standouts about St David’s is the speed at which the management moves,” she says. “And it’s crucial that the customer-facing aspects of the centre are as good as John Lewis’s own customer service.”
That really puts the ball in the centre management’s court, but it’s a challenge Steven Madeley has been happy to accept. “All of the customer service feeback from the website goes straight into my email inbox,” he says. “I can access it on my Blackberry and even if I can’t resolve the problem there and then at least I can reassure the customer that we’re aware of the issue and are working on it.”
But it’s not just an issue for the centre director himself. “I’ve just taken 100 of my team through another customer service course,” he says. “It was very practical. In the end my team should be empowered to do what it takes to meet the customer’s needs.”
And Madeley’s definition of ‘customer’ applies to the retailer as much as to the shopper. “We have to ask how, as centre managers, we can help the retailers get more through the till,” he says. Significantly, both Madeley and his retail liaison manager are former retailers.
“If a retailer’s struggling there are things we can do,” he says. “We can help with merchandising, or give them marketing support or perhaps some mall space.” But he says: “You don’t have to be an ex-retailer to do this – you just have to be able to look at a store through the customers’ eyes.”
At St David’s, the Merchants’ Association goes far beyond the usual talking shop and according to Madeley it is empowered to decide on centre-wide trading hours and to direct the marketing budget.
The centre director sits on the association’s board as company secretary, but the other directors are store managers from within the centre. And they have been prepared to make some bold decisions. For instance St David’s has taken Cardiff from one late night opening per week to five.
“Trade builds through the day and through the week,” notes Madeley. “Friday night is now almost as busy as Thursdays. And in the run-up to Christmas we’ll be trading until 10pm.”
As part of this collaborative approach, retailers are encouraged to disclose turnover data even if they are not on a turnover rent. Madeley says 98 per cent of stores now share this data, which is used to prepare weekly reports, benchmarked by categories within the centre and across the wider city centre, to allow store managers to monitor their performance.
“St David’s has been on a ten-year journey. We’ve moved it on significantly in spite of the economic climate,” concludes Madeley. “We’ve moved Cardiff from 10th in the rankings to sixth. And with limited development elsewhere I think there’s still room to go up further.
