Yarmouth Mall ‘doing just fine’
Online competition impacts local stores, but dedicated local shoppers help bolster sales
Seven years ago, the Yarmouth Mall lost one of its anchor stores after Zellers closed its doors nationally, leaving 80,000 square feet of retail space empty.
Thirty months later, 25,000 square feet of that space was filled by Winners. Although there remains 55,000 square feet of former Zellers space available, mall manager Linda Deveau says they’ve had a lot of “tire-kickers,” and that drive-up access and an exterior entrance are appealing to would-be tenants.
“Sometimes the thought of coming into a shopping centre complex, where we maintain seven-day-a-week hours, is intimidating to independent business people,” she says.
In recent months more stores have closed at the mall, including Payless Shoes, Bentley’s, Carlton Cards and Personally Yours Engraving, in addition to La Senza. Deveau explains that many of the closures are due to corporate shutdowns.
“In multiple instances the local store’s doing fantastic, but the corporation shuts down. Payless Shoes went out of business, but the store in Yarmouth was doing extremely well. With La Senza, Victoria’s Secret bought them out, started centralizing, promoting their online and flipping everything over to Victoria’s Secret. The La Senza store at the Yarmouth mall was doing fantastic.
“It’s not necessarily anything to do with it not being a well-supported store at the local level, which is more heart-wrenching for us as consumers, because it was a popular store and everyone shopped there,” says Deveau.
“I remember when we had the Calendar Club here as a seasonal store. They were number 1 in Atlantic Canada, number 5 in the country.”
In addition to corporate closures, many of the mall’s leases are three to five years and, over the years, some people chose not to renew their lease, perhaps for health reasons or as a lifestyle choice.
ONLINE SALES
Although online shopping has an undeniably negative impact on brick-and-mortar stores, Deveau hopes people will realize the need to shop smarter, with an understanding of the overall economic result of their choices.
“Even if you shop online, where are you shopping online? Canadian companies? Offshore? North America? Where are your goods coming from? I know people like to go to the metropolitan area to shop. At least those consumers are still paying taxes in Nova Scotia, which go into our highways, education and health-care system,” she says.
“They think they’re saving $10 or $20 but guess what, the registration fee for the sports team is going to have to double, because there won’t be any sponsors paying for the jerseys and ice time at the arena.”
A practice that local business owners gnash their teeth about involves local residents shopping in metro Halifax chain stores that are also in Yarmouth. The shoppers tell the recipients of gift items to return items locally if unsuitable. When this happens the sale credit goes to the store the item was purchased from and the debit is attached to the store it is returned to.
“We have one store here at the mall, they sold enough locally to achieve their bonuses. The returns from stores that came from metropolitan stores subtracted from their total sales, reducing them to a level where they didn’t qualify for their yearround bonuses,” says Deveau.
In an informal survey, the Tri-County Vanguard newsroom did through social media, nine per cent of shoppers preferred shopping online, 57 per cent shopped local and 17 per cent did both.
Angela Grandy said she likes online shopping because she can find exactly what she’s looking for usually.
“I’ve driven to stores and wasted my time when they don’t have what I’m looking for.”
Rob Smith prefers local because it's good for the community economy and he still loves going into stores and looking at what's available.
Sarah Turpin says it’s 50/50 for her. “I prefer shopping local to support the area and small business owners. I like going into local stores and them knowing my name or someone in my family. I prefer online for the prices, availability, and how I can do it from the comfort of my own home.”
THE FUTURE
Deveau points out that she’s been involved with the mall for almost 14 years, and over all of that time, at any given time, three or four vacancies is all they’ve ever had.
“We’ve always had 30-35 stores in the last 15 years at the Yarmouth Mall. It’s funny when people pass me in the halls and I hear people saying, ‘they’ll have to shut this place down soon, they’ll be bulldozing it soon.’ There’s 32 stores here… excuse me?” she laughs.
She says Chuck’s Diner is expanding and Northern Reflections is remodelling and doing well, in addition to other thriving stores.
“Nobody’s going to be bringing the bulldozers out,” Deveau says.