Change or die, US malls confront Amazon era

NEW YORK: As the retail industry churns in the Amazon era, American shopping malls are turning to a new generation of stores, food and entertainment offerings to make up for an exodus of department stores.

Prime mall real estate is increasingly going to players who began online and are graduating to brick- and-mortar, such as plus-size clothing label Eloquii, or stores selling niche items like candy and conflict-free diamonds.

In some cases, these retailers are taking space, literally, from exiting chains like Macy’s.

Other additions include the trendy burger restaurant Shake Shack, and Dave Buster’s, whose video game and pro-sports viewing restaurants are emblematic of the “experiences, not stuff” mantra now resonant among consumers.

The changes to malls - climatecontrolled beacons to American consumerism that grew rapidly in the latter part of the 20th century - are part of a fundamental industry rethink as e- commerce, led by gargantuan purveyors like Amazon, takes market share and alters consumer expectations.

“This isn’t the same culture as 30 years ago,” said retail industry analyst Dana Telsey, who sees today’s moves as the ‘early innings’ of a multi-year evolution.

Malls will endure because they offer “the excitement of being able to see what’s new,” she told AFP.

“It’s a meeting place. It’s an entertainment center. You’re always going to have shopping centers that engage,” said Telsey, chief executive of Telsey Advisory Group.

The changing times are a period of reckoning for hundreds of second-tier shopping centers in a country that experts say has long been ‘overmalled’.

A January review of 1,070 malls in the US by Green Street Advisors, a real estate research and advisory firm, classified more than 330 malls as “at risk to close” due to declining occupancy, low sales, weak socioeconomic demographics and anchor store vacancies. — AFP