design:retail - April/May 2015 - (Page 38)

shopping with paco 038 A Parking Lot Story PACO UNDERHILL CEO & FOUNDER ENVIROSELL p.underhill@envirosell.com A SPHALT AND CONCRETE. Parking lots and sidewalks. The historic starting point and ending point for retail. Often barren and windswept, especially on a winter weekday at the Mall of America. Sometimes scary, almost never positive. No one ambles, everyone rushes. More accidents happen in parking lots than on the highway. Laid out by engineering teams trying to fit as many spaces as they can. Mostly unchanged since the invention of automobiles-until now. General Shopping is a Brazilian mall developer and operator (I happen to serve on its board), which currently has some 23 locations across its portfolio, including urban locations in Rio and São Paulo, an old Olivetti Typewriter Factory repositioned as a mall near Guarulhos Airport, and a series of outlets called Outlet Premium. It is a young, family-based business. The CEO, CMO, COO and CFO all are high school classmates in the their late 30s and early 40s, and can complete each others' sentences. In the rough-and-tumble world of emerging market shopping, they have managed to tiptoe through expensive financing and keep up with larger competitors. The first Outlet Mall location opened some 40 miles outside of São Paulo six years ago. Set into the side of a hill, the outlet mall is a circle of prefab industrial buildings with parking on the inside and outside of that circle. The plan was to fill in parking as needed with new buildings. Almost 10 years old, it was a major hit in the mall marketplace. A water park and hotel quickly located on adjacent land. The second and third Outlet Premiums have gone up outside Brasilia and Salvador, and have improved dramatically since our first review APRIL/MAY 2015 DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM 18 months ago, where we discussed what was working, what wasn't, what they could be doing better and where the opportunities were. Not surprisingly, parking lots were our literal starting point. One of the things we noticed was the high number of motorcycles-Yamahas, Harleys, Hondas, all the big ones. Brazil is known for its crazy cycle boys, the young men who make their living and die daily weaving in and out of heavy traffic making deliveries. The cycle boys drive medium-sized bikes that lend themselves to high-risk, high-adrenaline zipping. What we saw in our lots were not those bikes, but hogs (I call them male menopause vehicles). Based on our informal survey, wealthy, middle-aged Brazilian males like cruisers, not unlike their American counterparts. Driving to the Outlet Premium malls has become popular. Park the wife or girlfriend on the back of the bike, you get the open road there and back, she gets to go shopping. A happy trade-off, and the perfect weekend activity. We also noticed the gawkers-after all, high-end bikes attract attention. Our thought was, why not move motorcycle parking into the body of the outlet? In this case, it was the Brasilia location, right next to a popular restaurant. It took a month to make the improvements: new concrete, lighting, some coverage, and training for the parking lot guards on how to direct traffic and manage the male menopause lot. The results were awesome. The number of bikes increased with each passing weekend. The lot was filled with people, often families, admiring the bikes. The adjacent restaurant reported a serious increase in sales. Visiting the bikes went from nowhere on customer satisfaction surveys to one of the leading reasons families, especially those with young boys, liked coming to the mall. And a year later, we started getting calls from the motorcycle dealers asking if we could build them showrooms on-site. They are a tenant we never imagined, and couldn't be happier to have. Later this year, Outlet Premium in Río de Janeiro will open-with good parking, shopping and other features. General Shopping is rethinking parking. The new malls will have power and water built in. We are thinking food trucks, craft fairs, car shows; we look at our asphalt not as a cost, but as an opportunity for place-making. Would you like to see a lot of cool bikes all in one place? PACO UNDERHILL IS THE FOUNDER OF ENVIROSELL AND AUTHOR OF THE BOOKS "WHY WE BUY" AND "WHAT WOMEN WANT." HE SHARES HIS RETAIL AND CONSUMER INSIGHTS WITH DESIGN:RETAIL IN THIS BI-ISSUE COLUMN. Photo by PACO UNDERHILL http://www.DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of design:retail - April/May 2015

Editor’s Note
Show Talk
On Trend
We Love This!
Designer Picks
Clicks & Mortar
How’d They Do That?
Postcard
Have You Heard?
Mingle
Shopper Insights
Shopping with Paco
The Lost Archives of Gene Moore
40 Under 40
The Art of the Mannequin
GlobalShop Review
The Maker Movement
Products
Backstory

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