WAREHOUSING FASHION


tant to get a balance – it’s not enough for something to be convenient if it’s an environment that doesn’t encourage spending. Traditionally, retail parks haven’t needed to entice shoppers in the way that highly competitive fashion retailers need to, and the fashion sector has had to take a fairly hard line on how the parks are presented. In many cases, it boils down to retail park landlords needing to spend money. Andrew Col- lier, partner for out-of-town retail at agency Cushman & Wakefield, says: “Sales turnovers are higher [in fashion] so landlords have been willing to spend money on refurbishments. Landlords are becoming more intellectual about it, and starting to focus more on how to increase dwell time, for instance, and improving amenities and facilities.” The specific requirements of fashion


retailers means they have tended to bunch together on parks where the aes- thetics suit them, and parks such as Ban- bury Cross in Oxfordshire, where money has been spent, have benefited. Many parks still have Next as their only fash- ion representative, and under the cur- rent economic conditions this doesn’t look set to change in the near future.


Filling the space Fashion retailers themselves have evolved too, making their businesses better suited than they used to be to retail parks. Their store formats don’t need to change drastically to work in big-box environments, but over the past few years their ranges have expanded to fill the space. “What fashion retailers have strug-


gled with in the past is having a wide enough range to use the space effec- tively,” says Roberts. “As their ranges have expanded it makes sense to have


Primark is likely to open its first out-of-town store in Milton Keynes, in 2012


Banbury Cross has benefited from creating an environment that is fit for fashion retailers


“LANDORDS ARE STARTING TO FOCUS MORE ON HOW TO INCREASE


DWELL TIME” Andrew Collier, Cushman & Wakefield


bigger stores.” But with traditional high street retailers embracing new environ- ments, what does this mean for the high street? As usual, it’s bad news for smaller town centres – if a retailer’s entire range can be showcased in a cou- ple of big, out-of-town stores, there remains little need for the current net- work of smaller stores. “In many cases high street stores are


quite small,” says Earnshaw. “With out-of-town they can offer the full range and get a higher number of cus- tomer visits because they’ve got a big- ger offer.” But Simon Moscow, head of retail


warehousing at fund manager Aber- deen Asset Management, says there will always be a role for some high street stores. “It’s not a blanket problem across the high street. There are still some very strong town centres.” And if retail parks want to appeal to


the entire fashion sector, they still have a bit of work to do. At the moment, the offer works best for middle market retailers – more aspirational brands, and brands such as Superdry, have so far steered clear of them. Even with the challenges the down-


turn presents, retail parks still hold great opportunities for fashion retailers battered by high street rents and recession-hit footfall. But with the bulky goods legacy that many out-of-town locations have, there are a few hurdles to leap before fashion retailers get everything they can out of the parks.


THE FASHION RETAILERS MOVING OUT OF TOWN


n Next is the biggest fashion out-of-town player with 218 stores, the equivalent of 2.89 million sq ft


n Marks & Spencer, while not a pure fashion retailer, has 1.65 million sq ft


n Arcadia has two fascias represented in out-of-town parks – its Burton and


Dorothy Perkins stores have 290,000 sq ft, and its Outfit stores, which house all the Arcadia brands, have 640,000 sq ft


n New Look increased its number of out-of-town stores dramatically from 2004, and now has 640,000 sq ft


n Primark is likely to open its first out-of-town store in the MK1 park in Milton Keynes in 2012


n After announcing an out-of-town push in 2010, H&M now has 110,000 sq ft of space


n TK Maxx has 2.05 million sq ft, while Peacocks has opened 520,000 sq ft of space. Laura Ashley meanwhile accounts for 230,000 sq ft


Source: Trevor Wood Associates XIV Retail Week November 2011 www.retail-week.com


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