Click and collect is where the future lies
BILLION Group CEO Sisa Ngebulana is now targeting UK malls through New Frontier Properties. He said the UK had the world’s most developed online shopping market. He is also developing elsewhere in Africa, where shoppers can be hard to find.
“If you have a big risk appetite and patience, Africa offers a lot of opportunity, although infrastructure constraints mean the radius of appeal is 4km as opposed to 20km in South Africa.”
He said he would not package all the African malls into Rebosis. “We’ll set up separate, perhaps regional, funds for that. Risk appetites of investors differ, and we might exclude some investors if we bulk everything together. We have to be aware of the makeup of the continent and where investors come from.”
Eastern Europe also presents opportunities, such as in Poland and the Czech Republic, but Ngebulana said the UK had proved that malls would not be killed off by the internet. “It’s arguably the best economy in the world, while it is very difficult to do business in a protectionist US. In the UK, retail sales are up 5.7%, they have 3% economic growth, it’s a first-world economy with ease of doing business. Footfall is up 4%.”
This defied expectations in the world’s most penetrated online shopping market, he said. “It’s turned out to be good for mall shopping because shops have simply moved to smaller formats but expanded their footprints to be everywhere so shoppers can click and collect.
“That’s the future of shopping centres — the UK is a testament to the opportunities for developers.” —