NewRiver Retail property director Allan Lockhart recently swapped his Mayfair HQ, from where he runs a £1bn retail portfolio, for a day on the shop floor in a Glasgow mall. Here he reveals what he learnt
“Allan, come and shadow me for the day to find out what it’s really like running a shopping centre.” Those were the words of one of our best-in-class shopping centre managers, Maureen Hill, who has run the Piazza shopping centre in Paisley, near Glasgow, for 20 years.
And so began our NewRiver Day in the Life programme.
Six of the NewRiver property team, together with two of our managing agents from Workman Retail, donned uniforms to begin a day of work experience at the Piazza.
Our day comprised a split shift – one half at a retailer, the other in centre management. The team were spread across a variety of our retailers, including Poundland, Co-op, Pep & Co, Peacocks and Iceland. Centre management shifts included cleaning, recycling, maintenance, security and centre operations.
A term frequently used in the NewRiver office is “we are smarter than me”, which is exactly why our property team are rolling up their sleeves to gain a truer understanding of exactly what it is like on a day-to-day basis for our retailers and centre management teams in one of our 33 shopping centres.
Paisley is only the first – our programme continues across the country later this year. Some of the team will be undertaking a day in the life of a pub – unsurprisingly there is no shortage of volunteers for that day.
So, what did we learn at the Piazza?
It was an extremely insightful experience, learning about the science behind product and stock level management on the shop floor as well as understanding the various additional roles people take on indirectly.
For example, our cleaning staff are also ambassadors for the centre and provide important customer service – Annie and her team know our shoppers inside and out and go the extra mile nurturing the strong sense of community and local engagement at the Piazza.
This level of understanding helps us to reach beyond the usual level of service for our retailers, helping us to become better shopping centre asset managers and demonstrating our dedication and commitment to our sector.
Our consumer surveys tell us who our shoppers are, but being on the shop floor and working on the tills provides a deeper and more authentic insight into who our shoppers really are, what they are buying and when – that experience is invaluable.
At NewRiver we are dissatisfied by the traditional “landlord and tenant” relationship – an archaic term in itself. Instead, we work with our retailers as partners, running our centres as operating platforms as though we ourselves were retailers. This means we can offer our retailers more than just a shopping centre, based on a diverse and lasting understanding of their businesses.
With digital constantly changing the way we look at shopping, our centres and customer experience, it was a refreshing day to remind ourselves why consumers go out to the shops.
In the Co-op there was a digital screen to enable customers to arrange home delivery or collection later in the day. Kate, who has worked on the tills in the Co-op for the past 15 years, makes her shoppers smile, chats about their day and informs customers of relevant offers they might have missed. She is very much a part of the reason shoppers come back and highlights the importance of human interaction and empathy.
The same goes for the centre management team, from security to cleaning. They are the face of our centre and the sense of community is testimony to why shoppers visit our centres two to three times a week.
Retail is a hugely exciting and dynamic sector, generates 5% of GDP and is the UK’s largest commercial employer. We are definitely smarter than me. As an industry, to continue to innovate and respond to evolving customer needs, we need to truly understand the nuts and bolts of our sector at all levels.
I thoroughly enjoyed my day on the shop floor in Poundland. As a retail specialist whose property team is working on retailers’ tills, stacking the lunchtime sandwiches, polishing the front of our centre signage and recycling our retailers’ waste in the service yard, we can really understand the true value of retail.
Doing your own job swap? Get in touch by e-mailing samantha.mcclary@estatesgazette.com
