Shopping mall GPS for your smart phone - -- Mobile phone apps have the GPS technology to guide people through streets. But step into a sprawling building, like a shopping mall, and you're on your own. But not for much longer. Most St. Louis...

 

Yes, we told you about this already back in early July - Sat Nav for High Street Shopping.

What more to say? Join and be active at www.mallsandmore.com to be ahead of our times.

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There will soon be sat nav (satellite navigators) for shoppers. Like bookmarking your favorite products on-line you will be able to take a snapshot of things you see along your shopping trip around a mall or along your favourite high-street.

With the snapshot of that great pair of shoes you will record the location where you saw it and thus find it again easily when you exhausted all the other shops for a better match.

How frustrating it is when you can't find that perfect item again running around and up and down your local shopping centre or even worse the big one an hours drive away.

So unfair, off-putting and annoying - but who wants to run a third or fourth time around a Bluewater or Trafford Centre trying to find that fantastic item!!??

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A consultant is a person who looks at your watch to tell you the time.

True or false?

It is true, because a consultant only works with your project and adds to it.

False, because he is the only one who understands what he sees? Without him you would not know the time and you would have no shopping centre.

And here we are back with Graucho Marx who taught us the dialectic of the reason and that if something is true the opposite must be true as well. To prove the point: where we have an entrance to a mall we also have an exit.

Going back in history we will find that the root of the word is the Latin “consultare” meaning "to discuss" (see also consul and counsel) – reference – see Wikipedia. Really a consultant is an expert who gives you his or her advice for a fee or free. Usually this little “r” taken out of free stands for a lot of money.

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The recent arrival of the Sat Nav for High Street Shopping that we predicted .... reminded me to take another look into the future.

What next?

Well, first the Sat Nav for the mall and -soon no doubt- for the high street will add to the demise of the good, old handwritten shopping list. And it will bring us new ways to list our purchase desires. We will get shopping list that are partly automated with the power of large databases and driven by clever apps (applications) that follow our ever move on the web.

These apps will gather and offer us the things we looked at as a shopping list ........

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What risk?

Why assess it?

How can you possibly anticipate risks?

.....

The type of risk you should consider will depend on the work you do. for some getting out of bad could be extremely risky- say you are on a boat or proper ship in a force 9 - or a fire fighter on call. For some it is the money they put into a shopping mall project. For others it could be using the wrong glue to fix tiles or even more so the silicon used to fix the roof glassing. ...

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Retailers, Centre Managers and Owners will be able to discuss this subject any day and for eternity.

Service Charges will never be fair. That's it and here we can stop the chat here.

Well, why would people then not stop discussing it? It is human nature to strive for a fairer world. Others may look at it differently and put it down to the flaw in human nature to try to save.

Either way - the result is the same. There is a strive to make service charges fairer.

Why are they unfair in the first place?

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It is clear. Fewer and fewer shopping centres have opened in recent years.

Since 2005 the number of malls opened has dropped significantly. In the first half of 2010 only 64 shopping centres opened - a 50% decline on the previous year when 120 centres opened in the same period. A further decline is expected for 2011.

Recent research by Cushman & Wakefield shows that just 2.1 million m² of GLA (gross lettable area) was added in the first half of 2010. For the reminder of 2010 another 3.8 million m² GLA is expected to be added to the market. These 5.9 million m² for all of 2010 would be a decline of just under 20% compared to the 7.1 m² GLA that had been added in the full year of 2009.

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Yes, car parking spaces (in Europe) are too small. How are four people supposed to get out of a car when parked in a typical European car parking bay in a shopping centre? Not to mention just the driver who can never fully open the door to get in and out.
No, car parking spaces are as big as required by law; and that is big enough. The passengers are supposed to leave the car before the driver slots it into the bay.

These opposing views open up several important questions:

1. How important is the size of the car parking space for a mall?

2. What dictates the size of the car parking space of a mall?

3. How big should the car parking bay be?

4. What other factors are or could influence this debate?

5. How to design car parking for a mall?

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News is the key to keeping up with the market, the business and the cinema.

News may be true, wrong, bias, incomplete, influencing, gossip, helpful, distructive, ....

Twitter has added a new dimension and is really reflecting the notion of just reading headlines. Considering you might just be the headline news reader twitter is actually generous with 140 characters per tweat.

Don't read the news. Stop using twitter and forget headlines. Focus on what you do. Watch the potatoes grow and flowers blossom, see how the snow falls and stars fill the night sky. Breath the fresh air and make someone smile. That's a health life and enjoyable. If you could just stand still for that one day, that morning, that moment.

You will find all links here in this news letter and a selection of headlines in the left column.

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A few years ago there were three key European countries labelled the property hotspots; countries with the fasted rising house prices:

England (UK), Spain and Ireland. This was around 2005. Of course other countries from the Baltic's to the Adriatic were in the same league, but these were new, emerging markets. In those days the experienced investors made a quick calculation:

Take the rent for a property per year and relate it to the property value - what is the yield.

If the yield is below what you get in any secure investment then there is little incentive in joining the so called "buy-to-let" market. Some people pointed out - don't let it - just buy and sell it the rising market and you can make a profit just in the time it takes to do the paperwork. In Spain people were buying .................

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The end of the alpha stage is now in our sight. The target date is 16.08.2010. From that day we expect the beta stage to take off.

What does it mean?

For all members subscribed and with an active profile by that day there will be no change - you will be a First Member with the status FM and the benefits detailed in our ToU. The benefits for FM include free membership and sharing in the success of m&m.

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Just as on the roller coaster on the right the economy will go down a bit more again before we will see modest improvements.

This prognosis can be underlined with a lot of statistics and bankers "science" - but it is also common sense and the milkman, the butcher and the baker down the road can tell you that (if you still have them). Otherwise you can ......

 

 

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... building up even more?

Good question, and there is a simple answer. It might be building up a little more, but then it will burst. This is as certain as the outcome of life.

All and every bubble in the world's economic history has burst. To know exactly when that will be is difficult to predict.

There are several reasons why this is going to happen. One is the phenomena of truth. The truth will always come out. Bubbles build up over time fuelled by economic progress and eventually this upwards trend is only sustained by money chasing the opportunities that have long gone.

Look at a place far away and with some money around. People start to build ......

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Theo Albrecht died, 88 years old. Wikipedia has no image of him. Apparently the last available image goes back to 1971. He had just been released from a kidnapping. His brother Karl lives and equally private life and so does the rest of the family.

Little is known about the family. There must be a question whether Aldi can continue after both founders will have gone before too long.

The secret of Aldi is so simple ......

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Getting news is becoming increasingly difficult for a number of reasons:

1. there is too much information around and thus too much news
2. news and information need to generate money in order to create it - so we got to pay for it
3. there are too many sources producing or rather paddling news and information along - we need to filter out the 121st version of that news about the new electronic monkey sitting at the entrance of that flagship store in Knightsbridge.
4. see 1.
5. see 4.

What we need to know is this:

1. How to get to the news we really need?
2. How to get to that news without paying a fortune?

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... a few months into the development of a project we realise the programme is completely out of the window.

The concept is not completed; the market analysis is the only thing ready. The architect is waiting for instructions what to draw. The letting agents are no supplying the sizes and types of shops. The agents are saying the architect is not producing the plans they need to define the shop sizes and where to put them. Catch 22 - chicken or egg ....

Could this happen to a professional team? .....

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We extended our Russian mall directory to over 550 projects in Russia.

Members are invited to add their comments and involvement with these projects and to update all the information we collected.

We have now more than 6,000 Projects in over 30 countries listed on m&m.

Links:

List of Mall Directories by Country - or just - Russia

all or one Country - or -  several Countries

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BP is in the headlines. You may think it is a bad company, you may not care, you may feel some sympathy.

What you really need to do is to consider whether this could happen to your business??!!

Someone once said only 'no news is bad news', meaning even bad news would help a company in their marketing and PR efforts.

Look at the share price of BP and you will see this is not true. BP is forced to sell assets and the b rand has been damaged for a generation.

Another example is McDonald's and how they turned their image around from the "Super Size Me" to a more health concious fast-food giant.

This cost millions and could have wiped out the company - as you may see in the example of Hoover in the UK that got whipped out after running a disastrous marketing campaign.

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.... bright. When will it get bright?

The truth is: No one knows.

That is the bad news.

The good news is: it will get better.

How do we know? Well it has been like this for millennia - for thousands of years and it is human nature.

In 2007 Christian Cuhls, CEO of m&m, predicted correctly that a recession would hit us after the Olympic games in Bejing, China in 2008. The signs were there in 2007 - but few could or wanted to see it coming. .............

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The selected news on m&m seems to show:

• Double dip recession very likely (see our view above).
• Mixed results on retail spending
• luxury goods are doing well - as expected
• consumer goods slipping - summer & the double dip fears
• more bad news to come

Does this help us & how?

• Well, let's be more efficient.
• Let's see the time we have spare now to plan ahead
• Keep the stock tight - but look for those hot items for crisis times.
• Cheap is not always best in the crisis. Educated consumers will look for decent quality to safe in the longer run.
• Plan for growth and be ready when it comes.
• Cut debt, save and improve your services & products.
• .......

Discuss your suggestions here.

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.... as we know it with cheap imports and a retail boom in the wake of it.

May be the current credit crisis is pointing to far bigger problems ahead with the era of cheap imports coming to an end. Looking back in history Japan was the cheap powerhouse after WWII. It went on to great economic boom outpacing the rest of the world until the bubble burst in the late 80s. Since then Japan has been in the economic doldrums.

Are China and India, etc. repeating history? Where is this leading, where will it end?

Who will succeed and who will realise they started too late to think about the future?

....

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Aldi donates Roof to the Environment

Aldi is by now a world name in discounting. They were the first one to sell PCs for a main news worthy price some 20 years ago. Medion became big enough to sponsor F1 today on the back of this "cash in till - pay later deal".

Now Aldi is going green not just in the UK. It's good PR and we can be sure they are not paying for it - they just couldn't add a cent or two on any item.

This deal indicates that going green is no longer a premium PR-route as we saw many years ago from companies like Sainsbury's Greenwich, London, UK store. Great - hopefully we will help to cut down on all those little and small items adding to our far-too-high carbon footprint.

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Are you the business wo/man who writes the business plan (BP) before jumping into the waters of trade and commerce?

Who needs a business plan? We are asking in the latest addition to our (sour) . BPs are for wimps - some people may say. Understandable, because writing a business plan is often dry stuff and based on a lot of (educated) guess work.

Are BPs important? Absolutely .....

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Taxes are for the small people as Leona Helmsley quite correctly observed. Even if the higher income tax payers are declaring & are paying their taxes properly the lower income people will be hit harder!? Not true!! Well, there are very few countries left now that would out-tax their high earners like Sweden and the UK did in times gone by.

All finance ministers now have heard of this supposed "rule" that if taxes are going up beyond x the tax revenue will go down.

......

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First - what is the "Summer hole"? Its called "Silly Season" in most of the English speaking world and refers to the summer time when politicians are on holidays and news stories are drying up. Some may refer to it as the "News draught" or some kind of (sour) gherkin time.

This period coincides with a customer and spending draught in shops. In this period of credit crisis even the prime holiday locations are suffering. The Mediterranean coastal resorts saw in 2009 already losses in double digit region and 2010 doesn't look better. The stock markets are rebounding, but the equally often dry business news are not promising either.

........

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Following on from the previous articles we have found a project just in that trendy, up-and-coming district to the left of the river and calculated the demand by a deep analysis of the horizontal layers of society and culture in the city, trends, fashion and a bit of predicting the future.

Now what? Well, a nice brochure, a good report on the market research and demand calculation and all with stamps from reputable, experienced consultants.

Actually the architects made beautiful images of a great building and they are well connected in the city, they never designed or even build a shopping mall, but that is easy – there are more than 10.000 or so in the world. Anyone can copy one of those ......

We have added some tools to calcualte the cost of finance and mortgages.

Basic Mortgage Calculator - calculates full years in detail with a print out year by year.

Affordability Calculator - determines the financing & investment you can afford based on the current financial status.

This subject is also discussed in the development handbook under - 3.4 Business Plan and there is a an outline spreadsheet for downloading available to help with the first step in developing a business plan.

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Reading through our news tickers - News - the picture of the world economy is far from clear. It goes up here and down there. The next day the messages are in reverse and on day three we have more bad news with the public debt rising everywhere.

Cutting public debt now and risk another dip - the double dip recession - or not to cut now and keep spending to fire up the economy?!?

The answer is easy? Or not! Politicians are arguing about this with no real clue as they are following those who lobby them with very diverse interests.

Try this - go to your bank and give them a report on the status of your personal or business affairs. There are debt, unpaid bills with no chance of getting the moneys owed, the outlook is shaky and taxes will .....

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Do we need traffic lights on food labels?

What are your views?

Where else could we use traffic lights to tell people what to do and what not?

 

 

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What will be the next big thing in retailing - the next IPod of retailing as a whole?

Hard to imagine - so let's take a brief view bag - what was the last big thing in the shops. I would say computers. For around 30 years now since the first MS-Code hit transistors our retail landscape has changed tremendously from the design process to the checkouts and lots of electronics on the shelves of the shops.

Do disagree and add your comment.

Looking back might open our eyes for the next big thing.

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In order to find a project we need to understand demand.
Demand is simply what people need. You may argue that was the case in the good old days of hunting and gathering. ...

The details of all those needs beyond basic food, goods and services are naturally a little more complex.

Defining essential demand is easy. ....

Without starting too big a debate it is clear that demand is not that easily understood as market and marketing forces are blurring the picture and again evolution creates new products, needs and desires.

Following the previous article (How to find a Project?) all we need to do is to find any sizeable business and analyse its market in terms of turnover, supply, demand and resulting profits. This will give us an insight into the driving forces and the opportunities to improve.

We recently had some link problems in the newsletters. This has now been sorted and we expect all confusion should end now. Running the site still in alpha phase should give us a little excuse here and we like to thank you for your patience.

We will add a some notes form the previous newsletter - as we had the request to re-send the proper links.

Thanks for all comments and notes drawing our IT support to the issue.

Amongst many other things:

- Information and Networking for Professionals in this industry.

- Focus on retail, shopping, leisure, malls and centres, development and management.

- Find news, information and experts in this industry.

- Discuss, blog and add your views. Build your knowledge and demonstrate your experience.

- Check what people are paid or should be paid.

- See how many shopping centres are in your country - all around the world.

- Make sure your centre is well represented.

- Look for jobs, opportunities and people to hire.

- Check who designed it

- list your company as designers, engineers, specialists, contractors behind the project.

- Find investment opportunities and people to work with.

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.... it's simple - just like 1 - 2 - 3.

1. Go to Add Content.

2. Choose a topic from Article to Pay Check Record.

3. Add your content .... done.

Thanks ....

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.... why?

Free Sponsorship during alpha phase:

We want to show our project not just to members. We could work hard to market this project to sponsors, take their fees and then pay for web campaigns to get more sponsors and members. We want to go a different way and be more entrepreneurial. We want to build this project not as web 1.0 & 2.0 bubble and certainly not along the lines of the business models that lead to the current global credit crisis.

Would you rather pay to sponsor us? - Feel free and drop us an email - sponsorship@mallsandmore.com.

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A full car park before the shopping centre opened!?

Well, what is wrong? Or not!? Christian noted his observations on some key aspects about Car Parking.

The first point of contact most customers will have with your retail development.

First Members (FM) will share in the success of mallsandmore.com.

We introduced this scheme from the start to encourage our First Members (FMs) to be active and to contribute. In return we will share the success with an allocated 10% of the business value.

Apart form enjoying the founding status  =>> FM there could be a token of financial appreciation here for you as well.

Find out more - ToU and in detail here.

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There is too much information around.

Everything we ever need to know (in our industry) is already published, somewhere (scientific research into the atoms of retailing excluded).

The problem is finding the information and separating the relevant from the waffle googled and twittered around. The problem is the overload and lack of focus. So, we will focus and cater only for a specific industry and will not be a hypermarket.

Could we succeed in being relevant and up-to-date?

Yes, because here you will only find relevant, active and known B2B contacts, professionals and experts in the industry of Retail, Shopping, Leisure and Entertainment Centres, the development and the management of these.

Have a look at our library, our extensive directory of malls from around the world and more .....

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Social Networking  is the big craze and here is another offering on m&m.

Don't use it if you do not need it!!!! We are putting more emphasis on Information anyway.

A lot of networking features are not here (yet). We show you new members and who visited your profile. But that is almost it. No linking around, no suggestions who you should meet or might know.

If you see someone you know you can say hi - by sending a message to them.

Here at m&m, it is more important to find people who make interesting contributions; people who could help you along with some ideas and may be more if their experience is relevant to you and your work.

In turn you can contribute and offer your experience to a selected, focused audience.

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We completed the testing of the system. We introduced new features from the extensive global mall directory to the the salary check listing.

What we didn't achieve is to attract the 200 - 300 First Members (FMs) we had in mind. We are below 100. Why? Several reasons:

1. We did not spend much time and money on promoting m&m.

2. We are developing our own insight into SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and www Marketing.

3. Our members have not been very active in promoting m&m.

4. We want to keep our aim to be selective, relevant and focused on this industry.

5. We believe in building a long-term success and word-of-mouth promotion is important for us.

6. Our newsletter roll-out has been behind schedule for IT reasons ["say no more..." - ;-) ] - but here it is now.

While the technical alpha testing is completed we will continue in alpha mode for a while to increase our FM base.

What can you do?

- Promote m&m.

- Invite friends and colleagues.

- Contribute articles, comments, blogs, ....

- Tell us what you think about m&m and

- what you need from m&m.

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