Retailers seek to tap Asian shopping dollars
Retailers seek to tap Asian shopping dollars
By Anil Penna
SINGAPORE (AFP): Top retailers from around the world are gathering in Singapore to explore investment opportunities in Asia's shopping industry, headed for a broad boom on the back of an upwardly-mobile middle-class.
Where they decide to set up shop after three days of brainstorming from Sunday could determine which city will become the future shopping mecca of Asia, perhaps overtaking Singapore and Hong Kong, the organizers say.
American and European retailers with plans for expansion in Asia will meet the region's shopping-center developers, property experts and architects at the convention organized by the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).
The 500 participants will discuss retail trends, investment opportunities and problems, the future of shopping in the region, changing tastes of Asian shoppers, funding and leasing, marketing and management, the organizers said.
The biggest developers in Asia, including Hong Kong giant Hutchison Whampoa/Cheung Kong Group of Companies and Kuala Lumpur City Center of Malaysia, will be in attendance.
McDonald's, AMC Theaters, Wherehouse Entertainment and PriceCotsco, The Wharf Group, Scott's, Swire and Sun Hung Kai will also be present.
Lawrence Elms, regional general manager of the New York- headquartered, non-profit ICSC, said the convention would influence the big-money decision-making of the world's leading retailers eying Asian shopping dollars.
The theme of the convention is "Three Billion Shoppers -- the Asian Shopping Center Challenge," testifying to the increasing spending power of an image-conscious middle class.
Shopping centers are taking shape rapidly throughout the region at a rate and a scale never seen before and "what is dawning is a retail investment bonanza," the ICSC says.
"In the Asia-Pacific, principally in China and India, there is an emerging population with a growing level of affluence and growing consumer needs and desires," Elms said.
"We have marketed very heavily this convention to the North Americans and Europeans. They are all looking at this market and looking to establish a presence here," he said.
The convention comes at a time when retailers in Hong Kong and Singapore, the traditional shoppers' meccas of Asia, are struggling against a slump that has eaten into their bottom-lines and turned the cities into a shop-owner's hell.
Singapore's Trade and Industry Minister Yeo Cheow Tong recently noted that other regional cities were catching up as shopping destinations.
"Today, huge modern shopping complexes are common in the capital cities like Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok," Yeo said.
Bangkok boasts the largest shopping mall in Asia, Kuala Lumpur has a 10-storey Sogo department store and will soon have a huge shopping complex at the twin Petronas Towers, while Jakarta is readying the five-storey Mega Mall, Yeo said.
Elms said a boom in the construction of shopping malls was taking place across Asia, fueled partly by speculation and partly by pent-up demand, and developers were trying to lure international brand-name retailers.
"You have a situation where in Bangkok, in Jakarta, in Malaysia, a record number of shopping centers are being developed almost simultaneously," he said.
In Taiwan, the government was considering a change of zoning laws to permit the construction of shopping centers, he said.
Elms predicted a "paradigm shift from current market and current consumer trends virtually overnight with the provision of world-class shopping centers" in Taiwan.
"The same thing will happen in China, in Korea and India where there are no shopping centers as we know them.
"There are traditional small stores and may be some departmental stores but there are no shopping centers that offer a complete range of merchandise and a complete solution for entertainment and leisure in a one-roof airconditioned environment."
He said consumer habits in such countries would change "markedly" once they enter the age of mega malls.