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.