Rapheal John-Lall

Trinci­ty Mall, which cel­e­brates it 30th an­niver­sary this month, now at­tracts more than five mil­lion vis­i­tors an­nu­al­ly, said Nicholas Hosam, gen­er­al man­ag­er, malls, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and re­sort of the HCL Group.When Trinci­ty Mall opened in 1984, the world was far dif­fer­ent from what it is to­day. There was no on­line shop­ping, per­son­al com­put­ers still had black screens and Kir­palani's was the dom­i­nant de­part­ment store of the day."We do have a con­fi­dent out­look. If our re­tail­ers are chal­lenged, we are chal­lenged. In or­der to grow the busi­ness, we do need to ex­pand the mall. Cer­tain­ly, the mall is per­form­ing well as we are the biggest mall in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, but there is room for im­prove­ment. Over the last ten years, the econ­o­my has been con­ducive to the cre­ation and ex­pan­sion of shop­ping cen­tres," he told the Busi­ness Guardian on Mon­day in an in­ter­view at Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, St James.

He said his role is to over­see the group's two mall op­er­a­tions: Trinci­ty and Long Cir­cu­lar Malls."What we know to­day to be Block B, the old­est sec­tion of the mall, was the first de­vel­op­ment of what we know as Trinci­ty Mall. It was a two-storey fa­cil­i­ty and housed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 ten­ants at that time. It was de­signed as part of a wider com­mu­ni­ty that was de­vel­op­ing with­in Trinci­ty and the en­vi­rons. In­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed in­di­cates Trinci­ty Mall was ac­quired by the Group when Cli­co pur­chased the shares of Home Con­struc­tion Ltd in 1991 from pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als."

Hosam said there has been "sig­nif­i­cant growth" over the last few decades; Trinci­ty Mall now has about 304 ten­ants."The mall com­pris­es the hub of the Trinci­ty Mil­len­ni­um Vi­sion, which is a 400-acre de­vel­op­ment planned com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment com­pris­ing a mix of us­es, in­clud­ing res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial and re­tail. The idea that was pur­sued by HCL is ap­ply­ing the con­cept of new ur­ban­ism where the plan­ning ap­proach seeks to have those with­in the so­cial space give them the ca­pac­i­ty to live, work, recre­ate, with­in their com­mu­ni­ty," he said.Hosam said the new ur­ban­ism ap­proach is where the so­cial space is de­vel­oped in man­ner for a mix of us­es by a mix of peo­ple."This prin­ci­ple has been ap­plied in Trinci­ty in that 400 acres. The mall is a cen­tral fea­ture which al­lows for com­mer­cial use and has evolved in may ways, in­clud­ing en­ter­tain­ment, like restau­rants, two well-stocked food courts and serves the Trinci­ty area well, that HCL would have had a hand in de­vel­op­ing the res­i­den­tial area as well. There are ar­eas for fur­ther growth and de­vel­op­ment with­in that com­mu­ni­ty."

He de­scribed the rates HCL of­fers ten­ants as "com­pet­i­tive.""The rent that any op­er­a­tor would charge de­pends on the lo­ca­tion, the size of the space, and the us­age it will be put to. Vol­ume space will at­tract more rent than ex­treme­ly small spaces. Our cri­te­ria is not to price at the pre­mi­um rate, but to be com­pet­i­tive and be­cause of this, we en­joy high oc­cu­pan­cy rates. If a ten­ant wants to rent on main street, the rent will be gen­er­al­ly low­er. So in­dus­try rates for ten­ants in malls will vary from $13 to $15 per square foot to as high as $45 per square foot. At the end of the day ,it is a val­ue propo­si­tion that the land­lord and ten­ant have to bar­gain."

Com­pet­i­tive mar­ket

Hosam said de­spite the new malls and oth­er shop­ping cen­tres be­ing opened in T&T now, it is dif­fi­cult to take away mar­ket shares from larg­er, more es­tab­lished malls like Trinci­ty."There are a lot of things hap­pen­ing in the in­dus­try as part of the re­al es­tate in­dus­try in terms of new in­vest­ments in planned shop­ping fa­cil­i­ties. Trinci­ty Mall serves a com­mu­ni­ty of about 250,000 peo­ple."A mall in south Trinidad will be a com­peti­tor, but all the ma­jor malls ex­ist in their own so­lar sys­tems and it is very dif­fi­cult to set up a com­pa­ra­ble mall to Gulf City in their en­vi­ron­ment. To set up a com­pa­ra­ble mall to Trinci­ty in that area will be a com­pa­ra­ble risk to who­ev­er that maybe. The cost of that land ac­quired many decades ago that Trinci­ty is on is now very high. That would be one chal­lenge to any fu­ture de­vel­op­er."

Hosam said Port-of-Spain and the west­ern sub­urbs have a num­ber of malls and shop­ping cen­tres be­ing ex­pand­ed and re­fur­bished."The pop­u­la­tion with­in the north­west area of Trinidad is sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er than the area that Trinci­ty oc­cu­pies. This area can sus­tain a larg­er num­ber of play­ers.So if there is a new shop­ping mall in Mar­aval or the In­vaders Bay ex­pan­sion project that is some­thing that will catch our eye in terms of com­pe­ti­tion. So that is some­thing we have to ad­dress strate­gi­cal­ly from our point of view."

Main street vs malls

He spoke about the evo­lu­tion from shop­ping on "main street" con­cept to shop­ping in malls in T&T."On main street, there is traf­fic con­ges­tion, there are harsh penal­ties for wrong park­ing. How­ev­er, in malls, park­ing is ba­si­cal­ly free and a mix of ten­ants. In de­vel­oped coun­tries, it is dif­fer­ent, peo­ple look for­ward to go­ing to Man­hat­tan in the down­town ar­eas and they do not want to go to the mall. That en­vi­ron­ment is at­trac­tive as there are char­ac­ter­is­tics that a mall can­not repli­cate. One of then pop­u­lar move­ments in North Amer­i­ca now is ur­ban re­gen­er­a­tion where they go in­to derelict neigh­bour­hoods and re-in­vest and cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment where peo­ple can live and shop. That has been lost in Port-of-Spain."

De­spite bet­ter bar­gains in places like down­town Port-of-Spain, he said cus­tomers in many cas­es are more in­clined to malls be­cause of bet­ter con­di­tions."Cus­tomers will tell you that they will get a bet­ter deal from the main street busi­ness. Price wise, they will shop for bet­ter bar­gains there as they know they will get a bet­ter deal. But their shop­ping ex­pe­ri­ence may not stack up to a con­trolled and or­gan­ised en­vi­ron­ment such as a mall. The mall will give you a mix of ex­pe­ri­ences in one hub."

On­line shop­ping

Hosam said on­line buy­ing has im­pact­ed on malls and con­ven­tion­al shop­ping."There has been a def­i­nite im­pact on our re­tail­ers with the ad­vent and phe­nom­e­nal growth of on­line shop­ping. It is repli­cat­ing what we would have seen abroad. Ini­tial­ly, the re­tail­ers that would have been the first to suf­fer were those sell­ing elec­tron­ic goods like phones and lap­tops. Now, on­line shop­ping has be­come more so­phis­ti­cat­ed and the range of prod­ucts has ex­pand­ed. The on­line mar­keters have in­clud­ed their de­liv­ery," he said.

He said many of Trinci­ty's ten­ants are not "equipped" to deal with this new way of shop­ping.He said there is no sim­ple so­lu­tion to this phe­nom­e­non."Re­tail­ers need to look at them­selves. Tra­di­tion­al busi­ness­es mod­els that re­ly on pur­chas­ing a cer­tain va­ri­ety of goods from abroad, pric­ing on a sim­ple mark up arrange­ment, main­tain­ing a cer­tain lev­el of stock, ex­ist­ing on a cer­tain cred­it line. Those busi­ness mod­els may not sur­vive. There needs to be a re-look at how busi­ness is con­duct­ed and whether or not the re­tail­er in a mall can adopt an on­line pres­ence. On­line buy­ing chal­lenges the tra­di­tion­al mod­el to the point where they do not even have a chance to com­pete," he said.Hosam said one of the things HCL is con­sid­er­ing is cre­at­ing an on­line por­tal for Trinci­ty Mall."This is some­thing for our ten­ants to pig­gy back on that and cre­ate an on­line pres­ence. In this way, they ex­ist in the phys­i­cal and vir­tu­al world."

Crime

He said crime is an on­go­ing chal­lenge for shop­ping cen­tres and is a re­flec­tion of the wider state of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty na­tion­wide. "With­out go­ing in­to too many de­tails, while we con­tin­ue to utilise both man­pow­er and tech­nol­o­gy re­sources through­out the fa­cil­i­ty, it is our strong part­ner­ship with the lo­cal pro­tec­tive ser­vices that has al­so proved to be a crit­i­cal el­e­ment to our suc­cess­es in re­duc­ing the lev­el of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty with­in the Trinci­ty Mall en­vi­ron­ment."As I said, how­ev­er, it con­tin­ues to be a chal­lenge that re­quires con­stant at­ten­tion, sig­nif­i­cant re­sources and shifts in strat­e­gy to­wards the pro­vi­sion of a safe and en­joy­able shop­ping en­vi­ron­ment for our ten­ants and mem­bers of the shop­ping pub­lic alike," he said.

Ex­pan­sion

He spoke about fu­ture ex­pan­sion plans which, he said, would come at a "sig­nif­i­cant cost.""We are in the pre-plan­ning stage. We are look­ing at adding new re­tail space. The ren­o­va­tion will in­clude an up­grade of the old­er el­e­ments of the mall that are due for ad­di­tion­al re­mod­el­ling. The over­all group strat­e­gy is look­ing at the growth po­ten­tial of the com­mu­ni­ty. We are con­fi­dent that fu­ture growth of Trinci­ty will be re­ceived well by the ten­ants, shop­pers and growth ar­eas."He said Trinci­ty Mall car­ries 520,000 square feet in re­tail gross leasable area (GLA)."That makes us the largest mall in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. What makes Trinci­ty unique is that we are part of a com­mu­ni­ty and it was de­vel­oped as part of a mas­ter plan com­mu­ni­ty that seeks to cre­ate link­ages with how peo­ple live, go to school, work and recre­ation."

Loy­al cus­tomers keep­long­stand­ing ten­ants go­ing

Some ten­ants at Trinci­ty Mall have been there for as long as the mall has ex­ist­ed: 30 years. De­spite the changes in the econ­o­my and nu­mer­ous trends in the world of busi­ness over the last three decades, some ten­ants have sur­vived this com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment to tell their sto­ry.J Mo­hammed, own­er of Pret­ty Feet, be­came a ten­ant at Trinci­ty Mall in No­vem­ber 1984 and did so be­cause she had a dream of open­ing her own busi­ness.Mo­hammed, who start­ed at a "very young age", told the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day she al­ways had a pas­sion for shoes and fash­ion which led her in­to this busi­ness which spe­cialis­es in footwear, evening bags and cos­tume jew­el­ry.

She al­so sells ladies' work­ing shoes, ca­su­al shoes, a wide col­lec­tion of chil­dren shoes and fash­ion bags.When se­lect­ing shoes for the stores, match­ing ac­ces­sories are al­so se­lect­ed.Pret­ty Feet has car­ried a line of Ital­ian shoes for more than 25 years and cus­tomers are pleased with this line, she said.At Pret­ty Feet, there are shoes for all oc­ca­sions: Christ­mas, East­er, Moth­er's Day, grad­u­a­tions.She ad­mit­ted that 30 years is a long time to be in busi­ness, but said she does not re­gard this as a job but as leisure."There were some try­ing times, but I love what I do. I do it for leisure and not as a job; that is why I do it so well," Mo­hammed said.She said feed­back from her cus­tomers dri­ves her to con­tin­ue.

She re­count­ed some of the most mem­o­rable mo­ments with her cus­tomers."I had cus­tomers who mi­grat­ed to New York and Cana­da and they still re­turn home to shop at Pret­ty Feet be­cause of our choice col­lec­tion. They told me no mat­ter how they look for shoes in New York, a fash­ion cap­i­tal, they still re­turned to Pret­ty Feet for their choice."Mo­hammed spoke about busi­ness­es af­fect­ed by on­line buy­ing."Some peo­ple would buy shoes on­line and af­ter be­ing dis­sat­is­fied, would try to re-sell it at Pret­ty Feet. At Pret­ty Feet, cus­tomers are al­lowed to try as many shoes, walk in them and mod­el in them, even with their out­fits. We aid in se­lect­ing the most ap­pro­pri­ate."

She al­so said what has kept cus­tomers com­ing to her for the last 30 years is the qual­i­ty ser­vice, smile and spe­cial at­ten­tion of the sales peo­ple."Here we greet cus­tomers with a smile. Our ser­vice is the best, our se­lec­tion is the best and my work­ers al­so love the shoe busi­ness. We all have a pas­sion for what we do."Nazi­ram Baksh, own­er of Young Gen­er­a­tions which sell clothes for ba­bies, chil­dren and adults, has been at Trinci­ty Mall since it opened 30 years ago."We start­ed off with ba­by and chil­dren's ac­ces­sories and gar­ments. Af­ter that we ven­tured in­to gar­ments. One day my sis­ter and I were hav­ing lunch and it was dur­ing the con­struc­tion of the mall, and I told her I want­ed to ap­ply for a spot and open a busi­ness there. I went for it and man­age­ment ac­cept­ed my re­quest."

She start­ed off her busi­ness with 1,200 square feet of space in the mall then ex­pand­ed to 1,800 square feet and then to 4,200 square feet."For 16 years, I op­er­at­ed with 4,200 square feet and then I went back to 1,800 square feet as it was more ap­pro­pri­ate for the store. That's the size of store I op­er­ate now. We did what we had to do for dif­fer­ent eras of the busi­ness and have op­er­at­ed at dif­fer­ent sizes."

She said the peo­ple of T&T are very fash­ion con­scious and are very up-to-date with all the in­ter­na­tion­al fash­ion styles."As busi­ness own­ers, we must know what the in­ter­na­tion­al styles are. I trav­el to Los An­ge­les four times a year and buy goods to bring and sell here."Baksh said their prices are com­pet­i­tive, an­oth­er rea­son why she has been suc­cess­ful.She said man­age­ment re­la­tions at Trinci­ty Mall has evolved over the years."Man­age­ment has changed in a big way. I think when I start­ed off 30 years ago, the re­la­tion­ship was bet­ter. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion now with man­age­ment is not as good and, as a ten­ant, I want that to im­prove," she said.