After the retail market boom, which saw all players on theclothing, footwear and cosmetics market fight for a place in newshopping centres or in those about to open, it is Unirea ShoppingCenter's turn to "unfreeze" the rental market. Here is its offer: aspace that generates the biggest traffic, located in a centralarea.
Unirea's original strategy was to attract several small stores,many of which are no-name stores, in order to create a continuousclient flow, consisting of Bucharest inhabitants, as well as ofpeople outside Bucharest.
The store was not thought out as a mall, but rather as space forretail, but changes on the market of real estate transactionsprompted the Adamescu family, owners of the shopping centre, tochange their development strategy in the context of a consumerspending contraction, which implicitly entailed tighter competitionover clients.
"Models were blended. In addition to the many small storeslocated on the centre's sides, which do not differ very much fromthose in a mall located on the city outskirts, they also brought ina small number of well-known retailers, which occupy larger spacesand post higher sales," believes Stefan Liute, strategy director ofbranding company Grapefruit.
In the absence of massive investments in renovating and insetting up stores, Unirea Shopping Center made available largespaces to well-known international brands, such as Body Shop, LeeCooper, and, more recently, to Zara, Douglas and Mango, with thelatter to open a 230 square-metre store within the centre in lateSeptember.
Adamescu has thus allocated more than 10% of the overall salesarea to large players in order to compete with Bucharest malls,whose main target has been to create as complex a tenant mix aspossible.
"Up until two years ago the offer was not in line with thelatest trends. Now Unirea appears to be catching up. I started tocome here more often since Zara opened. I go into the centre, aswell, because I can find everything I need here. I think it hasbecome competition to the malls," says Catalina Nastase, a clientpassing by the future Mango store, who thinks starting in October,this will be her next shopping destination.
Although the Adamescu family signed rental contracts with largeforeign retailers for the central part of the centre, there areseveral empty spaces in on the sides of the centre.
Carmen Adamescu, manager of Unirea Shopping Center, could not becontacted for comment.
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