The rise and fall of Black Friday
According to today's Daily Telegraph,
'Shoppers have shunned the high street during the busiest shopping week-end of the year, in favour of snapping up bargains online.'
Apparently, footfall fell by 10% across the weekend, compared with last year, with online traffic up a similar amount.
I'm sure that this dramatic fall is largely a result of the chaotic Black Friday scenes broadcast on TV last year and the year before.
Shoppers certainly seek bargain but, en masse, eschew the prospect of being trampled in the process.
When my company introduced the first electronic count system at Meadowhall in 1990, we were taken aback by the scale of the spike in shopper numbers during the last weekend in November.
The conventional wisdom at the time was that December was the peak month for Christmas shopping and the November weekend was largely overlooked.
It's now generally recognised that this a critical period to attract people to shopping centres but, by creating an atmosphere of fear, retailers have greatly reduced the appeal of the high street and shopping centres.
True, retailers like Argos with a strong online presence will have enjoyed additional sales, albeit at the cost of their sales in high street stores.
For centre owners, however, the impact of Black Friday's effect of footfall is serious as they have no compensating mechanic to balance the loss of trade.
For retailers, I'm sure there will be a rethink on in-store discounting on Black Friday, with many following Asda's lead in abandoning the concept.
However the online impact of the November weekend (including Cyber Monday) is likely to be repeated in future.
To protect their tenants' sales, shopping centres must resuscitate the notion that they can deliver an holistic shopping experience, which means pleasant surroundings, easy in-and-out parking, great service and somewhere comfortable to eat.
Unless these creature comforts can be guaranteed, sales through clicks will continue to replace those through bricks at a critical time of year for centre retailers.
As retail sales equal rents, equal asset value, developers will need to invest to protect their tenants by introducing measures to make the shopping trip a pleasure, not a pain.