WAREHOUSING FASHION
The out-of-town fashion set
Some fashion retailers are mixing things up and turning to retail parks for store growth. Is this a trend that will increase? Rebecca Thomson examines the shift and asks if it will last
of-town push. Primark, too, is likely to open its first out-of-town store in 2012, according to retail and property ana- lysts Trevor Wood Associates.
Shift in style There are several reasons behind fashion retailers’ out-of-town push – conven- ience for shoppers and a desire to expand among them – but the recent pace of change hasn’t been quite as fast as might be expected. While fashion retailers are no doubt keen to get on to retail parks, some say rents are no longer as cheap as they once were and there has been little movement from fashion retail- ers in terms of new out-of-town store openings in the past couple of years. “Rents on most of the best parks
Some fashion retailers are moving in and relying on retail parks to fuel growth and increase their space. Will this trend increase? Rebecca Thomson looks at how they’re faring
Retailers such as Next are changing the retail park mix
T
raditionally, retail parks have been the domain of bulky goods retailers, but over the last five years the out-of-town
mix has shifted. Today, you’re as likely to see a Next as a Carpetright, and other fashion retailers are keen to follow. “There’s a lack of shopping centre
and high street development in the pipeline and that’s going to be continu- ing for the next two to three years,” says Lawrence Earnshaw, senior director of out-of-town retail at property agency CBRE. “But retailers still want to grow, so they’re seeing retail warehousing
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as a way of getting more space.” Spaces left by big out-of-town play-
ers such as MFI and Allied Carpets going into administration mean land- lords are keen to get other chains in, and the difficulties many fashion retail- ers are facing on the high street mean more of them are looking to do so. Next was the first fashion retailer to try the format, with its first out-of-town store opening in 1989. It now has 218 retail park stores across the country. Since then, Arcadia, New Look and Peacocks have gone into out-of-town retailing, and last year H&M embarked on an out-
“THERE’S A LACK OF SHOPPING CENTRE AND HIGH STREET
have got to a level where they’re actu- ally not that competitive,” says Richard Allsop, partner at property agency Morgan Williams. “The market is very tough at the moment.” While fashion retailers were keen to try the retail park format up until about 2008, Allsop says the amount of activity has dulled since then as rents have crept up. “There’s relatively limited availability of space at the moment,” he says. This in turn means prices are unlikely to fall any time soon. But over the longer term, the format
DEVELOPMENT” Lawrence Earnshaw, CBRE
would appear to work for fashion retailers Retail parks attract a different customer from the more leisurely shop- per on the high street, and they tie neatly into the web’s business model. “They’re very convenient,” says Earn- shaw. “Shoppers can be in and out very quickly.” And it’s perhaps no coinci- dence that Next, with its big retail park estate, is currently on a push to high- light its click-and-collect credentials. “Retail parks are very well positioned to accommodate multimedia in-store – particularly around the click-and-col- lect aspect.” This convenience aspect of retail
parks has served fashion retailers very well, and the environment of retail parks often reflects this element of the experience. “You don’t necessarily go for a nice browse around a retail park. You go for a particular reason,” says Kantar Retail director of retail insights Bryan Roberts. But in the fashion sector, it’s impor-
November 2011 Retail Week XIII
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