Malls and brick and mor­tar re­tail busi­ness­es, in gen­er­al, are fac­ing their biggest chal­lenges in decades.

2020 has seen the fa­mous Amer­i­can de­part­ment store chain JC Pen­ney file for bank­rupt­cy. US busi­ness mag­a­zine Busi­ness In­sid­er es­ti­mat­ed that in 2019 alone al­most 10,000 de­part­ment stores in the Unit­ed States closed per­ma­nent­ly.

Here in T&T, Movi­eTowne which com­pris­es a cine­plex and shop­ping cen­tre will be per­ma­nent­ly clos­ing its Ch­agua­nas branch. Malls are strug­gling as they ex­pe­ri­ence low cus­tomer turnout and con­tin­ue to lose ten­ants dai­ly. It rais­es the ques­tion of the fu­ture of malls and tra­di­tion­al shop­ping af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is over.

So will the days of brick and mor­tar re­tail and en­ter­tain­ment re­al­ly be over soon?

One of the kiosk in Trincity Mall which was closed due to COVID-19.

COURTESY DAVE SURAJDEEN

Un­cer­tain­ty about the fu­ture

Derek Chin, own­er of Movi­eTowne is un­cer­tain about the fu­ture and sur­vival of large en­ter­tain­ment cen­tres like the ones that he has built through­out T&T and in Guyana.

In Oc­to­ber, he an­nounced that the Movi­eTowne branch at Prize Plaza in Ch­agua­nas will be per­ma­nent­ly closed and at­trib­uted this to the land­lord and the slow busi­ness caused by COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian, Chin ad­mit­ted that even be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic be­gan cin­e­mas around the world were be­gin­ning to see a de­cline in sales be­cause peo­ple were be­gin­ning to move to on­line stream­ing in their homes.

“Tech­nol­o­gy, on­line shop­ping, Ama­zon are what has caused all the prob­lems with the de­part­ment stores. Look at what hap­pened to JC Pen­ney. Look at many stores here. They used to be the place to go and COVID-19 just put a nail in the cof­fin. Peo­ple are afraid to go out and spend mon­ey.”

He said it was dif­fi­cult to pre­dict what will even­tu­al­ly hap­pen in his in­dus­try.

“Cer­tain­ly there was a ques­tion of whether cin­e­mas could sur­vive. We don’t know. You can’t say if COVID-19 will be solved with a vac­cine, no­body knows. We don’t know what will hap­pen in No­vem­ber or De­cem­ber. We can’t talk about up­grad­ing or in­vest­ing as every­thing has been put on a hold.”

One bright side to the chal­lenges fac­ing this in­dus­try, he said, is that peo­ple are nat­u­ral­ly so­cial be­ings who like to meet and so­cialise.

He al­so ap­pealed to land­lords to as­sist busi­ness­es like his by be­ing le­nient.

Sev­er­al stores closed at Trinci­ty Mall

Mean­while, at Trinci­ty Mall, sev­er­al stores have been closed over the past few months and those who re­main are con­cerned about their sur­vival, and in par­tic­u­lar how they will fare for this Christ­mas sea­son.

Ten­ants who did not want to be named, at­trib­uted this to a fail­ure by Trinci­ty's man­age­ment to work with them on how to im­prove the mall.

"The foot traf­fic of the mall has been re­duced dras­ti­cal­ly. Ten­ants are pes­simistic about the fu­ture of the mall and if the busi­ness could ever be re­vived to pre-COVID-19 busi­ness," a ten­ant added.

The Sun­day Guardian reached out to Sandie St Hi­laire, man­ag­er, Trinci­ty Mall who said she could not give a com­ment on how Trinci­ty Mall is do­ing at this time.

Hand-hold­ing tech­nique

De­spite a re­duc­tion in foot traf­fic in malls around the world, Gulf City's man­age­ment said it con­tin­ues to im­ple­ment prac­tices to keep the mall in a strong po­si­tion for the up­com­ing Christ­mas sea­son and be­yond. The man­age­ment is an­tic­i­pat­ing an in­crease in busi­ness due to closed bor­ders and peo­ple shop­ping for Christ­mas.

“We an­tic­i­pate an in­crease due to the closed bor­ders and Christ­mas shop­ping. Gulf City is safe, clean and spa­cious enough to shop com­fort­ably," a state­ment from the mall stat­ed.

The man­age­ment said it has de­vel­oped a hand-hold­ing tech­nique with its ten­ants and as­sist­ed them by slash­ing rental rates.

The HP store which was closed due to COVID-19.

COURTESY DAVE SURAJDEEN

“Al­though our cur­rent busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment may seem stand­still, Gulf City Mall has de­vel­oped a ‘hand-hold­ing’ tech­nique when it comes to our rental. From March 2020 to date, all ten­ants were of­fered dis­count­ed rental rates, since we un­der­stood the eco­nom­ic strain the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic placed on the busi­ness sec­tor.”

Gulf City’s man­age­ment added that many of their stores have rein­vent­ed them­selves, find­ing in­no­v­a­tive ways to or­gan­ise their stores, in­ter­act with cus­tomers, col­lect pay­ments and de­liv­er prod­ucts. Some have in­vest­ed in their own web­sites, What­sApp chats, grab and go and de­liv­ery ser­vices.

“Mi­cles, J&K Sig­na­ture Styles and Star­bucks, just to name a few, have been able to feed the con­sumer’s de­sire for the so­cial ex­pe­ri­ence and will like­ly be­come the new an­chor to bring vis­i­tors to the mall. We have des­ig­nat­ed three ar­eas for curb­side pick­up on­ly and part­nered with Bringt­ing.com, a lo­cal e-Com­merce and de­liv­ery ser­vice.”

The man­age­ment said they have in­vest­ed in hand san­i­tiz­ing units at every en­trance and their mul­ti-storey carpark. Ef­fec­tive sig­nage have been placed through­out the mall en­forc­ing the law of wear­ing a mask, as well as high­light­ing its im­por­tance to curb the virus. The mall is al­so rou­tine­ly san­i­tized.

'Adapt to sur­vive'

Alex Siu Chong, CEO of Ex­cel­lent Stores said al­though there are chal­lenges, busi­ness own­ers must adapt to the new en­vi­ron­ment.

Ex­cel­lent Stores is de­scribed on its web­site as the coun­try's largest de­part­ment store op­er­at­ing five branch­es.

“Many tra­di­tion­al re­tail­ers, in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and lo­cal­ly, have a sig­nif­i­cant amount of cap­i­tal in­vest­ed in bricks and mor­tar lo­ca­tions, and those who have not been able to ad­just their busi­ness mod­el, busi­ness process and busi­ness cul­ture to the chang­ing con­sumer be­hav­iour by em­brac­ing tech­no­log­i­cal en­gage­ment and ful­fill­ment changes miss out on this grow­ing stream of rev­enue that is can­ni­bal­is­ing tra­di­tion­al re­tail foot traf­fic sales at an ex­po­nen­tial rate,” Siu Chong stat­ed.

He be­lieves that tech­no­log­i­cal changes and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic do not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean the “ul­ti­mate death” of malls and re­tail spaces.

“Con­sumers are hu­mans and there still is a de­sire to go out, so­cialise, browse and en­gage in some form of in­ter­ac­tion. Com­bined with the fact that there is still a large de­mo­graph­ic of the pop­u­la­tion, lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, that pre­fer to touch and feel, the chal­lenge is to find the bal­ance be­tween the two–on­line and in-store. This is ev­i­denced by a grow­ing num­ber of pop-up Ama­zon stores across the Unit­ed States.”

Ap­peal for land­lords to be con­sid­er­ate

Busi­ness­man Joe Pires, own­er of Is­land Bar Chill and Grill Restau­rant in South Park told the Sun­day Guardian that he is not hap­py with the way that he was treat­ed by the man­age­ment of South Park Mall.

His restau­rant which em­ploys 25 work­ers was closed three weeks ago as they were un­able to suc­cess­ful­ly ne­go­ti­ate with the land­lord.

“I can con­firm on record that even though we were in dis­cus­sions about re­new­ing our lease at South Park and ne­go­ti­at­ing back rent due, we were sud­den­ly in­formed three weeks ago that our ten­an­cy had been can­celled. We con­firm that we have va­cat­ed the lo­ca­tion and 25 em­ploy­ees have now been placed on the bread­line.”

Pires said he will try his best to move some staff to his north op­er­a­tions but due to COVID-19 and his restau­rants not be­ing able to open this will be chal­leng­ing.

“We are in­deed dis­ap­point­ed that the land­lord act­ed so abrupt­ly with­out con­sid­er­a­tion of how their de­ci­sion would af­fect all con­nect­ed to our restau­rant and our on­go­ing dis­cus­sions.”

He called on land­lords to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the tough times that busi­ness­es op­er­ate in.

An­tho­ny Ra­hael, Group CEO, Ra­hael Hold­ings which owns South­Park mall, said he has been very rea­son­able with all his ten­ants with­out com­ment­ing on any spe­cif­ic re­la­tion­ship.

“We have been ex­treme­ly help­ful to all our ten­ants. We have worked with them. I have let­ters and e-mails from most of them thank­ing me for help­ing them with­in this dif­fi­cult time.”

He al­so said they have seen an “ab­solute de­cline” in foot traf­fic at South­Park mall over the last few months. How­ev­er, he said they have fared bet­ter than their coun­ter­parts as they are a “strip mall” which means the mall is not en­closed and they are in a bet­ter po­si­tion to com­bat the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

He ex­plained how they have been able to sur­vive this tur­bu­lent pe­ri­od.

“We have gone to our lenders through a de­fer­ral of in­ter­est pay­ments and a small re­duc­tion of in­ter­est rates. In the last eight months, we did not have to pay any in­ter­est as they were de­ferred. Hope­ful­ly, the Gov­ern­ment will give us good news and the econ­o­my is opened up more.”

He re­mains op­ti­mistic about the sur­vival of malls as he said T&T and Caribbean cul­ture is very open and peo­ple love to so­cialise.

“Malls will al­ways be rel­e­vant but you must rein­vent your­self. In South­Park mall, we have many restau­rants and en­ter­tain­ment, cin­e­mas. So in­stead of strict­ly cloth­ing, we have rein­vent­ed our­selves.”

On­line tax­es

The T&T Gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ed on­line tax­es which came in­to ef­fect in Oc­to­ber 2016 to dis­cour­age con­sumers from shop­ping on­line.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in the 2016 bud­get state­ment said: “The pop­u­lar­i­ty of on­line pur­chas­es has in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the past few years. Re­duc­ing the de­mand for these items helps to save on for­eign ex­change and to as­sist lo­cal in­dus­try. There are 31 couri­er com­pa­nies reg­is­tered and bond­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go and is es­ti­mat­ed that the val­ue of pack­ages cleared by these couri­er com­pa­nies ex­ceeds $1 bil­lion a year .”

The sev­en per cent tax was im­posed on the couri­er com­pa­nies bring­ing in goods via air freight on­ly.

In 2018 he dis­closed that cit­i­zens racked up US $1.2 bil­lion in cred­it card trans­ac­tions. He added that com­pared to pre­vi­ous years, cred­it card trans­ac­tions were far less.