JLL’s Neil Churchill, Destination Director at Brent Cross, hosted the Revo conference at RD 2025

The Evolution and Future of Retail Destinations

A central theme of the conference was the evolution of retail destinations and how technology is shaping the future. Gareth Jordan, Director at ART Software Group and Retail Advantage, led an engaging panel discussion examining how technology has influenced retail destinations and what the future holds. The panel also explored cutting-edge innovations like artificial intelligence (AI), an exciting feature that forms part of ART’s newly released enterprise software Retail Advantage Insights.

PANEL DISCUSSION – The Evolution and Future of Retail Destinations

Gareth Jordan introduced the panellists, each offering a unique perspective on the changing retail landscape: Alasdair McClimont, Customer Manager at The Crown Estate – overseeing performance analysis and support for retail and hospitality, nationally; Anand Basu-Attwood, Commercial Operations Manager for Multi-Realm based at Resorts World Birmingham – supporting Brand Partners to unlock their full potential by being commercially ready for what 2025 holds in store; and Glynn Edwards, Trading Director at Landsec – leading sales collation and commercial analysis backed by experience on the retail side, previously running UK Retail for Ted Baker. 

The term “destination” now transcends traditional divisions between retail parks, shopping centres, and high streets. Gareth asked Alasdair McClimont to set the scene and reflect on the shift in how retail destinations are perceived and with The Crown Estate’s wide variety of locations. “The Crown Estate has some fantastic locations that really focus on their own USP.” Alasdair highlighted the diversity of their destinations and experiences, ranging from iconic global flagships and first-to-market brands in central London. “Think of a retail street and Regent Street is up there in your mind, and then switch all the way across to somewhere like Rushton Lakes, where we integrate massively with the local wildlife reserve.” Here, beavers got their second shout-out of the day, following the ESG presentation by Anastasia Petrova of Deepki for their benefits in fixing ecosystems and supporting biodiversity. “Channelling what makes distinct destinations will define best in class in the long term,”Alasdair noted. 

Anand Basu-Attwood – Commercial Operations Manager for Multi-Realm, shared his perspective on the post-Covid era

Gareth delved into the changes that have occurred and operational impact for managers of diversifying destinations, and asked Anand Basu-Attwood to give a picture of the post-Covid era at Multi Realm. Anand explained the pattern of social changes and intensified footfall with the evolution of places, customer behaviour and use of space with the introduction of big leisure operators. He also shared the unexpected but real opportunities for retail with the introduction of events around Esports at Resorts World Birmingham: “We’ve got an arena directly opposite us, and it’s not a huge event; Esports brings in between 1,500 to 2,000 people, but the net worth of these individuals…one of these teams spent £50,000 in three days in one retailer.”

Evolving Landlord-Tenant Relationships

“It has been a tough climate for brands, so tapping into different customer bases is important”, said Gareth, exploring the evolving interaction between landlords and tenants. He asked Alasdair his thoughts on this, and how technology is helping brands navigate the current conditions. 

“I think the historic cautiousness in the relationship between landlords and tenants is further down the road in shopping centres than it is in retail parks and on the high streets, but in essence, there’s always a cautiousness with margins being squeezed for the retailers and the hospitality industry,” commented Alasdair. However, a shift away from selectively sharing of data toward a more transparent approach is changing the traditional dynamic: “A big part of what I do is around gathering sales information, and I think the question that needs to be asked is why do you really want to know the sales information? Are you gathering it so that you have a better insight into your leasing and can inform your asset management of risks? So is it to fit your benefit? Or do you want to understand that for the benefit of your customers? We’ve worked really hard to move away from the idea that we’re collecting your information, and we’ll cherrypick what we give back to you, and we’re not going to necessarily leverage that for your support. Instead, we’re trying to really focus on this idea of gathering the information that will provide as much back to you as possible.” Technology is helping “through dashboards, through data, providing it much quicker, much sharper for all the brands in situ.” With margins being squeezed and pressure on staffing, Alasdair concluded that “time is precious. So we need to be asking ourselves – how are we adding value for brands?”

Glynn Edwards reiterated how technology can address the pressures on brands and gave Landsec’s approach: “Operationally they’re needing to be a lot tighter on the P&L so therefore much more efficient when utilising their teams.” One of the ways in which we’re helping in this respect is through our comprehensive footfall data. This allows us to support the brands in planning their rotas more effectively. For large openings like Sephora at Bluewater we can provide them with trend analysis allowing them to plan across not just certain days but throughout the seasons. For a brand like Sephora who were relatively new, not just to our centre but to the UK, anything we can provide in this respect helps them to thrive from day one, rather than having to learn some hard lessons after opening.” Glynn also discussed the innovative use of technology in Landsec’s event spaces, such as “Under The Lights” under Piccadilly Lights, where heat mapping and flow tracking provide valuable insights on space utilisation for exceptional mixed-use concepts. He concluded, “it starts at the centre level, but it works all the way up in terms of their teams’ relationships with retailers. Collaboration and technology is the essential part.” 

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Retail

A highlight was the demonstration of AI tools that are revolutionising retail analytics. Gareth introduced Retail Advantage Insights, (an enterprise-level version of the Retail Advantage software) which uses AI to offer powerful, flexible insights.

Gareth Jordan introduced Retail Advantage Insights, an enterprise-level version of the Retail Advantage software

Gareth presented a dashboard on tourism data to show how quickly the AI tools could generate specific insights. “The answers we are after could well already be there in the dashboard – the reporting in Retail Advantage is informed by 25 years of industry experience – but using the AI, we can get an even faster answer to something specific. The AI also gives us suggested questions relative to this dashboard and data.” For example, the Retail Advantage AI quickly identified that Chinese visitors were responsible for the highest total sales at specific locations, prompting further exploration of the factors behind this trend that can improve insight and strategy. 

Glynn Edwards, Trading Director at Landsec shared experience working with AI

Glynn Edwards and Anand Basu-Attwood also shared their experiences with AI, noting its role in improving efficiency and decision-making. Glynn contributed how Landsec uses AI for monthly trade reporting, combining data from Retail Advantage with Power BI and onsite experience. “We will also move towards a chatbot program to pick up some of the more basic queries from our commercial teams. The amount of requests we get through as a team that could easily be dealt with like that is extraordinary. We’re also looking at how we can use it to model footfall and provide sales forecasting so we can be more on the front foot. Eventually the property industry will need to move from traditional machine learning to real generative AI. I would say, however, that traditionally, as an industry, property hasn’t been the quickest to adopt tech” Glynn said. “Although it’s certainly an industry motivated heavily by profit, and there is no doubt that effective use of AI in the future will correlate directly with the business with the biggest returns.” 

Anand – a self-proclaimed tech enthusiast – explained how AI has improved his workflow. “AI has revolutionised things for me,” giving the example of an 800-page lease that he rapidly digested in one minute. “I’m putting in the tenancy schedules and combining the data that I’m getting from Retail Advantage and generating effort rate reports within seconds…these are jobs that used to take me a period of time, whereas now they’re in the background and I can think about what am I going to do with that information rather than spending hours getting there in the first place.” 

Consumer Sentiment and Profiling with AI

Alasdair brought his experience with AI back to continually asking the right questions: “What do we want to use technology for and how does it add value for our customer brands? If we want a genuinely collaborative relationship, what can we give back? What can we share?” 

Alasdair McClimont, Customer Manager at The Crown Estate shared experience working with AI

Alasdair explained how technology is helping them advance their understanding of consumer sentiment and profiling, particularly for somewhere like Regent Street, which attracts 72 million visitors annually. Surveying a sample of such a highly trafficked area is impossible to get meaningful results, but by bringing together vast amounts of data, including consumer spending, movement patterns, online behaviours, and social media insights – an AI-driven approach helps identify their key consumer demographics. Additionally, Alasdair emphasised the unique contribution landlords can bring with “locally focussed insight and benchmarking.” For example, they’re exploring the impact of store windows on consumer behaviour, using AI to analyse how window displays affect customer attention and messaging. “We all know there is more to a store nowadays than the just sales that go through the door; it’s the marketing reach, it’s a billboard, particularly in places like central London, so we have run some provisional AI analysis over window schemes.” While still in its early stages, he explained that the analysis is helping to create benchmarks for the brands’ visual proposition on Regent Street.

The Future of Retail Destinations

Gareth concluded by asking the panellists to look ahead to the next 10 years for their destinations, and the answers made it clear that the future of retail lies in effective collaboration on several levels. 

“I think both us and the brands are considerably stronger together – sharing that data,” which continues to be a defining change, answered Glynn before highlighting Alasdair’s earlier point about how we view our stores and their purpose now and into the future. “I think that’s really powerful. I don’t think that brands look at a shop and think the amount of money coming into the till is how important it is. We need to change our approach as well. There is no point in just looking at traditional KPIs. I think we need to think a bit broader than that,” said Glynn, looking at bigger influences and the halo effect for the rest of the centre too.

Alasdair brought in other collaborative angles including opportunities around ESG, and turning strong retail destinations back into central community hubs with the leasing and recruitment to support collective impact on the community as a whole.  “We do some really positive collaboration work at The Crown Estate in central London with neighbouring landlords, so it doesn’t have to just be about you and the brands; it’s thinking more broadly about how you work together to create a strong destination,” said Alasdair. 

Anand closed the discussion and highlighted changes over the last decade as a sign of the trajectory to come: “10 years ago I came to my first one of these conferences, and collaboration wasn’t a word that we were talking about between retail and landlord, and it’s now moved from being tenant versus landlord to destination with brand partners. The further that goes the more integrated we become, the more successful they become, the more successful we become. I don’t know where it’s going to go over the next ten years, but if it keeps on going along the route that we’re seeing at the moment, it’s only going to be positive.” 

Whether you want to understand how to get more from the data you collect or learn more about how the industry is moving towards AI-enabled tools to simply and quickly achieve insights and collaboration, let’s discuss.

Stay tuned for next year’s line-up for Retail Destination Live

This year celebrates the 35th anniversary since the release of Back to the Future Part II (the film where they go to the future), so we thought it might be fun to explore themes and predictions in this cult classic to see how close they came to reality and where they might inform real retail innovation today. 

Although it was a vision of 2015 way back when the film was made in 1989, we find a mix of imagination with timeless lessons about technology, customer engagement, and adaptability. Futuristic technology often conjures visions of device-heavy retail environments and virtual interactions. Still, it is the invisible digital layer that will continue to set forward-thinking retail destinations apart in 2025. 

Anticipating Consumer Expectations

In Back to the Future Part II, the future (now) includes hoverboards, electronic payments, flying cars and VR headsets. While only some of these ideas have materialised, they reflect how imagining the future can inspire genuine advances and also align with customer desires.

Lesson for 2025: Be bold  

Embrace bold, forward-thinking ideas to anticipate and create demand. The world is undergoing seismic shifts, and many brands are responding with dramatic overhauls. Some are desperate gambles, while others are well-planned transformations happening quietly behind the scenes. Take Jaguar’s recent rebrand — it’s unconventional, surprising, and a bold signal that a dramatic change is coming, sparking conversations everywhere. Their approach breaks away from traditional norms, teasing a new era. What exact changes will emerge from the brand are still yet to be seen, but  it is a good illustration of how bold moves can set the stage for potential future success. 

In today’s fast-moving landscape, standing still simply isn’t an option. However, boldness must be backed by deep analysis. If we are only relying on surface-level data or simplistic metrics, we can easily be led astray. True progress demands getting into the weeds, understanding the nuances, and uncovering the key factors that will shape your future. Success comes to those willing to dig deeper and act strategically alongside a willingness to be daring.

The Role of Nostalgia

The film’s recurring theme of nostalgia reminds us that while people love innovation, they also value connection to the past.

Lesson for 2025: Old Fashioned Service 

Combine cutting-edge innovation with nostalgic elements. For example, reimagining a classic approach to customer service where people’s interactions are improved with smart insights. This can improve performance to attract new and reward existing customers or forge deeper working bonds with your brand partners. 

Measure the impact of your interactions and efforts. Much like any other area of retail, we need to know if what we are doing works and then fine-tune actions to make measurable gains. Customer service is as important a metric as any other and can be used alongside other KPIs to discern insight and explore relationships and correlations. Whilst many teams have taken this on board and are being highly praised, people still hark back to a time when you could get good service everywhere. Get those mystery shoppers out there and test how close you are to the gold standard. 

Time-Traveling Data

All of the Back to the Future films emphasise how knowing the past (or the future) can give a competitive advantage.  In Part II, Biff’s infamous sports almanac contains the results of major games and races. 

Lesson for 2025: Data is the almanac of modern retail

Real-time data and predictive analytics are increasingly critical in managing retail destinations. Movement tracking, dwell-time analysis, catchment data and brand performance monitoring etc. help destination managers make informed decisions about tenant mix, store placement, and marketing campaigns. For example, using heat-mapping technology to identify high-traffic areas can guide strategic placement of key tenants or promotional activations, maximising engagement. Similarly, predictive analytics can inform event programming or brand selection based on customer preferences and trends.

AI forecasting is also revolutionising predictive analytics by simplifying the process and eliminating the complexities of traditional methods. With just a few clicks now, tools can give you the ability to customise your insights by applying filters and adjusting variables, tailoring forecasts to answer your unique questions. We are facilitating our clients to dive deep into the past with their historical data and emerge with predictions that empower smarter, data-driven decisions as they look to the future. 

Adaptability to Change

Marty and Doc Brown constantly adapt to new challenges, illustrating the importance of agility.

Lesson for 2025: Agility 

The traditional anchor-tenant model is being redefined to include a mix of shorter leases and pop-ups, digitally native retailers, and boutique offerings to create unique places and more flexibility. Retail destination managers are curating a diverse tenant mix that reflects changing consumer interests, such as fitness studios or culinary and leisure experiences. Thematic zoning informed by data insights, such as organising clusters of stores around specific themes like wellness, technology, or fashion, helps create distinct identities for spaces that can adapt with consumer shifts. It also offers points of comparison at a portfolio level for things that don’t sit within common boundaries. 

Personalisation and Immersive Experiences

The film’s futuristic but nostalgically themed Café ’80s shows a blended mix of digital ordering, which is now a very familiar picture in restaurants today. However, the prediction that people living in 2015 would design 80’s themed cafés is perhaps interesting in itself, given the rise of immersive hospitality. 

Lesson for 2025: Personalise and make it memorable 

Not every moment can or should be a wow experience, but by leveraging technologies, you can offer customers a self-selecting experience that allows them to choose when they want to engage. Through AR, VR and AI-driven personalisation, placemakers can create unforgettable shopping destinations with the right mix of wow moments and digital and interactive experiences to suit their destinations. Whilst it is not about transforming all retail or restaurants into theme parks, some exciting immersive operators take themed shops and hospitality to new sensory levels. For example, I recently saw the founders of Ephemera Group speaking about their immersive restaurants in Paris, where spaces are customisable and include taking diners to space or under the sea.  

Join us at Retail Destination Live 2025, where we will be delving further into the views of different professionals on the future of technology in retail with a panel session. The agenda shaping up promises important debate and learnings for the year ahead. 

RLI Host, Owner & Publisher Jayne Rafter

The conference covered the shifts from transaction to the experience economy, as well as trends like edutainment, hospitality excellence, and collaboration between public and private investment to stimulate economic and community impact. For us, authenticity, as well as analytics, came through as a guiding path. Here are just a few key insights we took away from the day. 

“The smaller the world gets, it seems the bigger it gets too.”

Dimitri Lalagos, SVP American Dream (New York) 

Joining a panel alongside operators of diverse destinations in Macao, Riyadh, and Dubai, Dimitri commented that, as competitive as New York is with high retail saturation, we have to think about today’s competition on a global scale because there is so much wallet share.  

Dimitri Lalagos, SVP American Dream

Adapting to the customers’ new needs post-pandemic, leisure now represents 55-60% of the retail mix at American Dream. Dimitri advised that their job as retail developers is constantly evolving, allowing space for their retail and leisure partners to evolve too. By analysing data to accommodate partners better, “it’s about making space for them to put their best foot forward.”

“You are not talking about buildings. You are going into relationship management.”

Timothy Jones, SVP Retail Sands China

Responsible for 850 retail stores and 2.2 million square feet of retail space, Sands Shoppes Macau captured 40% of retail spend across the city in 2023. With Macau forecasted to attract 33 million visitors this year, Timothy spoke about the essential need to understand what the customer does on the property and the use of data and analytics to curate the experience. “What makes it tick are the people that visit and the people that make it work”, so he said it is about understanding that human relationship to understand how things stick together and be successful. 

 “Why can’t the high street be as dynamic as my social feed?”

Ariel Haroush, Founder & CEO OF Outform | Founder & Chairman of Future Stores

Ariel Haroush showcasing Future Stores on London’s Oxford Street

Ariel joined a panel about retail renaissance and transforming physical stores into experience-driven platforms. Riffing on earlier panels and the priority to attract the new young consumers that live in the moment, he opened with a story about his young son that perfectly captured customers of the future. Driving along, Ariel’s son asked him to change the song. Ariel answered that they were listening to the radio, but his son insisted on skipping the song again, and Ariel had to explain the concept of live radio.  

Understanding the need to grasp shoppers’ attention in milliseconds, Ariel explained his immersive retail media store concept, Future Stores, which opened on London’s Oxford Street this month. Inspired by the billboard that comes to life in Back to the Future, the stores blend media, retail and digital performance marketing with LEDs covering 400 sqm of wall and ceiling space at Oxford Street, their second location after New York. 

Designed to host brands for no more than two to three weeks, Ariel explained that it was about “conversion and curation,” turning retail into something more like your social feed. The store optimises itself with data and can change the messaging according to the colours and branding that customers respond best to. “The store itself is a living thing based on what’s happening in the data”, he said.

One of Jayne’s key takeaways was that by connecting and working together across industries and sectors, innovation thrives through a shared sense of purpose. The next big chance for the industry to connect is coming up at MAPIC. So, get in touch if you want to schedule a meeting or request a demo to see what Retail Advantage can do for your data, analytics and innovation strategy. 

Helping your customers serve their customers better through analytics is a powerful way to enhance value across the retail and hospitality chain. Landlords can create a mutually beneficial relationship where both parties thrive by fostering an environment that encourages growth, longevity and customer satisfaction. 

The new value proposition 

Consumer shifts keep retail and placemaking on its toes, but the industry is proving its adaptability and resilience in identifying new drivers of performance. Maintaining a competitive edge is no longer simply about drawing out KPIs to work from, but also offering value. We see this value shift reflected in data strategies, whether you are managing high street real estate or a shopping centre, which clearly involves distinct approaches and considerations. The overarching trend toward connecting the dots between data and value and sharing it will continue to gain momentum into 2025 and beyond. 

Customer focus 

At ART, we are pleased to be working with The Crown Estate to support their innovative approach in Central London. The landowner and custodian of buildings along Regent Street and across St James’s, we supported The Crown Estate’s Customer Manager Alasdair McClimont to help drive customer KPIs. Alasdair approaches supporting and driving the performance of the brands that feature in the spaces he works, always with a retailer’s perspective in mind – something that he draws from personal experience. 

Creating both local appeal and global distinction requires innovative and practical solutions that meet the changing needs of visitors, retail and hospitality customers. The Crown Estate uses Retail Advantage to provide on-demand data, insights and communications. 

Alasdair McClimont, Customer Manager at The Crown Estate, said: “At The Crown Estate we use ART’s Retail Advantage to support our ambition to be a collaborative partner to our customer brands through the sharing of data and insights to help drive their KPIs.  The portal also enables us to measure and understand our customers’ performance and link this to our marketing activity to ensure we are targeting our activity in the right way and delivering with impact.”

Resilience and adaptability

From a real-time view of sales, category performance, like-for-like growth, social media engagement to customer satisfaction metrics, the insights and priorities for landlords and their customers evolve. Dynamic destinations not only require actionable data insights to develop with changing customer needs and conditions, but also flexibility in measuring and reporting tools to align with this strategy. Our experience also shows that the more value and understanding you draw from the data you have also informs the data you need – holistically addressing opportunities. Shifts might often be subtle, but tools and innovation partners must afford you this freedom and create the necessary space for business to adapt. Moving away from static charts and graphs gives property teams the power to slice and dice data to provide agile views on information that helps build inclusive growth and lasting value.

There are numerous ways to approach an understanding of customer behaviour. The clever avenue that is often missed is to pool strategic resources and enjoy a connected approach from landlord through to brand. For instance, the view of the average customer could be seen as quite different if you are taking only one set of data in isolation instead of a balanced view. By fostering a collaborative workflow, enhancing brand insights reveals a richer understanding and proactive places focused on shared success. 

Retail Advantage

Schedule a demo to see our analytics tools in action 

Data has become an invaluable tool for placemakers. Still, without capitalising on the strategic insight available, you cannot deliver the high-quality customer experience that both today’s consumers and brand partners demand. Swift action has become necessary for brands, landlords, investors, and management teams.

One common challenge for fast paced environments like retail and leisure is that even organisations putting resources into data gathering can be disappointed by the lack of usable analytics that this yields. Traditional methods or retail intelligence apps with static numbers and reports do not always meet current needs. Our experience providing solutions and analytics puts us in a prime position to understand these frustrations and address the data-decision gap that threatens a collaborative dynamic with brand partners around timely shared insights.

Our tool Retail Advantage, holistically addresses data opportunities by bringing performance metrics together for a consistent, current view. Tailored visualisations and reporting are designed to answer relevant questions and can flag and serve insights to the right people through augmented capabilities. Having the right tools allows placemakers to see what works for their customers and under what conditions. The same approach can be used to inform leasing decisions and support the brand partner journey. 

“We use data daily to help and nurture our brand partners with a 360-degree picture of how they trade in comparison to others in their category, the centre trading averages and comparisons to other locations within our portfolio. Our management style is collaborative and supportive, it helps tremendously that Realm staff are predominantly from a retail background meaning that we see our role as collaborators. Sharing the results and insights we get from Retail Advantage makes us leaders rather than managers or simple custodians, there is a much greater sense of proactivity and not relying on chance when making important decisions.”

Anand Basu-Attwood, Commercial Operations Manager at Resorts World Birmingham, a client of Retail Advantage

From initial discussions, smart tools and data-driven insights enhance tenant attraction and performance. Retail Advantage helps identify suitable partners by analysing customer demographics, foot traffic, and competitive landscapes, allowing leasing teams to target brands that align with local demand. Analytics also assist in optimising the mix of your places and spaces, ensuring that the retail, leisure and F&B complement each other to maximise foot traffic and cross-spending.

The variety and volume of customer data organisations can collect has increased dramatically, creating difficulties in processing it efficiently. In some cases this leaves you feeling like you have less control and understanding than before. Intelligent digital tools make it faster to reap the benefits from different touchpoints across the leasing journey. By creating an ecosystem that answers questions and informs decisions, retail stores and destinations can avoid accumulating costly, non-relevant data with no clear outcomes for coherent and connected analysis. The efficacy of using individual data points is also amplified when seamlessly integrated, supporting a more engaged and productive workforce that is well supported to satisfy customer demands.

“It is integral that we are able to provide our brand partners with the knowledge, background and trade patterns of our Centres as well as the locations, regions and countries in which they trade. Retail Advantage helps us gather, analyse and dissect this data from a wide selection of sources on a daily basis. We then provide a service to our brand partners, advising them about what this information shows and how best to use it to maximise trade and performance across our portfolio.”

Eleanor James, Head of Brand Development at McArthurGlen, a client of Retail Advantage

No matter where your organisation sits on the AI debate, from already adopting it to being curious to fearful, there are clear opportunities in retail and leisure to help grow capacity and upskill your teams. We still see a lot of best-guess approaches or processes that rely too heavily on human labour. 

AI is becoming a powerful tool in the future of retail places, but for it to be effective, the use of the right technology and consultancy partners is integral. By moving beyond using data to create simple charts and graphs and instead adopting augmented analytics, we can help shopping environments democratise more data and provide real-time guidance to the frontline and centre of operations. 

Schedule a demo to see our analytics tools in action 

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We speak to Outlet Evolution, clients of ART’s Retail Advantage platform, to discuss ready to apply analytics and how innovation has proved an essential partner for growth.

Outlet Evolution Services is a specialised company in the Outlet Sector, managing and leasing over five different outlet centres in the Central European Region. By relying on a network of preferred partners, be it advertising agencies or innovative service products like Retail Advantage, Managing Partner Sebastian Sommer shares their strategy of keeping the costs of centre management as low as possible in order not to burden tenants excessively but also not to reduce returns for investors.

“We value partnerships driven by mutual goals, this applies both to investors and our brand partners alike. All growth is targeted to be sustainable reflecting profit targets from all stakeholders. While this may sound academic, it’s actually very specific. From mutual business plans to ready to apply analytics and a very flexible commercial marketing approach, we have gradually evolved our management style over the last years.”

Outlet Evolution Services Managing Partner, Sebastian Sommer

ART Software Group Director, Gareth Jordan has a firsthand view of how the right technology partners can help transform retail spaces and create true destinations. Retail Advantage meets operators’ needs with the data environment and insights to achieve their strategy. Many sites, locations and schemes vary in size, explains Gareth – it might be an inner city space with less than ten shops, where it is about nurturing what is there through a very hands on approach combined with real-time feedback and visibility on what is or isn’t working. Or, the objective might be to increase the  size of the offering, so the analytics need to show you if the brand mix is working and will remain compelling as you scale.

“Retail Advantage is a tool to garner growth on many levels, whether the objective is to grow in quality, in size and breadth, or maintain a relevant offering. We must all be proactive in fast-changing retail places, so data and analytics are central to that. The product grows with the scheme, which makes it exciting as our platforms are flexible and scalable.”

ART Software Group Director, Gareth Jordan

“Reliability and commitment are key to our business. We build and select our partners based on their attitude to our business and the cutting edge it can bring to us. This is exactly how we teamed up with Retail Advantage,” says Sebastian. Elaborating on their work with Outlet Evolution, Gareth discusses how Retail Advantage is being used at the destinations. ”It is always exciting to be a part of these sorts of projects where we are involved from the early stages to help provide visibility and answer questions on what is working. Outlets have long been an important element in retail but you need a strong and very specific strategy. At Hanse Outlets and Fashion Outlet Marl this has been approached in the best way.” 

“Seeing, breathing, and working with a retail mindset is the key for any successful outlet center management. With plenty of years in the retail sector, our team provides such know-how, but only with a flexible technology tool kit that provides quick but granular information, the real impact on the business can be brought to life.”

Outlet Evolution Services Managing Partner, Sebastian Sommer

Hanse Outlets is a perfect example of Retail reinventing itself. From an old retail park with local, convenience driven offers and DIY stores, the area has seen a constant investment and development over the last 6 years. With a total of 13.000sqm GLA and over 45 brands, the outlet has been opening its major Phase II Extension throughout 2023. “By the end of 2023 over 2.3m guests have visited the outlet center, fueling substantial growth with our brand partners and having delivered the best commercial year ever.”

While Fashion Outlet Marl opened right in the first wave of the pandemic, it has yet to realise the traction the outstanding location will achieve. “Its inner-city location connected to a shopping center with over 5m visitors p.a. offers the best of both worlds, convenience shoppers looking for a bargain and day-out travellers enjoying the offers, particularly on Fridays and weekends. Due to intense retail and marketing management, Footfall and Sales have grown 30% like for like since 2022, and we expect that momentum to continue,” explains Sebastian.

Fashion Outlet Marl’s current footprint of 25 stores will see a major development of over 30m€ over the coming 1-2 years, bringing the outlet centre to over 50 stores and making this a true outlet destination within Germany’s most populated region. With a total of over 15.000sqm GLA this outlet can grow up to 80 stores in the near future. 

“Understanding and touching the customer journey while building rapport and loyalty through this has been top of mind for every operator in recent years,” Sebastian explains. There is hardly unlimited growth in Footfall as consumers have plenty of choice; therefore, more than ever before, it is about creating true destinations. “It’s a people business, and by continuing to create memorable moments for our guests, we can’t wait to keep on growing. It is obvious that business decisions should consider a data driven layer of information. Not that data takes decision on its own, but it serves as a value advisor.”

Gareth agrees with this and remarks about the essential shift from descriptive insights to more advanced connected retail intelligence. “Experience and expertise will always be the drivers of success. Then it becomes a question of the clarity that the supporting information provides. Getting closest to the moment with the latest data possible; being able to see what the trajectory is now … Engaging Retail Destinations require a  level of data-driven analysis that reveals a broader picture to operators so they can take their next steps with confidence. As Sebastian says, it’s a people business, so whilst we are understandably excited about the uptake of opportunities from AI and Machine Learning, our clients’ experience and human objectives will always be at the root of our tools. As they grow, so do we.”

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Images courtesy of our client Outlet Evoltuion Services

Glynn Edwards, Trading Director at Landsec & Gareth Jordan, ART Software Group Director

Retail expertise

Gareth Jordan: Can you give a bit of background to your retail experience and how that led to your current role and expertise at Landsec?

Glynn Edwards: So my retail journey has always been primarily grounded in fashion retail with the bulk of it at Ted Baker. The last role I had there before moving over to Landsec 3 years ago was Head of UK Retail where I oversaw the people and operations of around 150 stores, concessions and outlets. Throughout that time I was able to work with a whole variety of different landlords and shopping centre operators across the UK and always had a really exceptional experience with Landsec over some of the other operators. So when I’d decided to branch out away from direct retail operations, Landsec stood out as being a great place to look. I was fortunate that just as I started to look for new roles a Business Development Manager position was created for our full price assets which I was pleased to get. From there the role evolved and now I head up our Trading Team which focuses on the collation of portfolio-wide sales and footfall, which we report on and analyse in order to drive commercial and strategic decisions. This is fundamental in driving one of our key performance indicators which is ‘Data Driven Decision Making’.

Gareth: Do you feel we are seeing a more blended mix between retail and property? 

Glynn: I would say so. One of our key pillars at Landsec is customer centricity and we’ve certainly been able to live this by bringing in a wealth of retail expertise to our teams. In doing so we’ve been able to break down some of the more traditional landlord and tenant challenges and have a much more collaborative approach. More and more now we’re seeing experts in both fields drift between the two disciplines which can only be a good thing.

Gareth: How does technology play a part in your role and communications?

“It’s a huge part of what we do, not just in my team, but as a business as a whole. Specific to my team Retail Advantage is an incredibly important tool, as we use it for the collection of sales data from thousands of brand partners.”

Glynn Edwards, Trading Director at Landsec. Retail Destination Data & Technology Issue 2024

Glynn: Likewise, we use it in many centres as a communication channel although this is often complemented in other ways. In terms of how we present our data internally we’ve been expanding into Microsoft PowerBI, creating a whole raft of dashboards to give our teams access to data that they’d have not thought possible a few years ago. All of this is helping in our ambition to become a more modern digital business.

Retail analytics

Gareth: As you say Landsec uses Retail Advantage to collect and connect sales data. Can you share any examples of how analytics gathered through the tools support you, your brands changing needs and the leasing strategy? 

“I would say one of the key ways in which we’re using this data at the moment is in pursuing a leasing strategy of ‘Fewer, Bigger, Better’. The sales density information we have available allows us to see brands who do not have enough space to fully express their brand or capture the full sales potential of the centre. We’ve been able to work with a whole variety of brands in the last few years to dramatically increase their store size in targeted environments where we have a high degree of confidence that they can increase their sales and ultimately their profitability. Away from just the data, we’re able to leverage our strong customer relationships to understand when a brand maybe doesn’t have sales density as a priority. We have examples in many of our centres where a brand is introducing itself to a new market or maybe a new demographic and so are less focussed on the money they generate, but on the connections they can make with our guests. We’re flexible enough in our approach that we’re able to support them regardless of their end goals.”

Glynn Edwards, Trading Director at Landsec. Retail Destination Data & Technology Issue 2024

Gareth: What are the most exciting trends and are you seeing anything that has the potential to disrupt the sector? What would you like to see more of in the future?

Glynn: As with nearly all industries I would expect AI and machine learning to be quite disruptive. There’s such a huge opportunity for data-led businesses to find efficiencies and ultimately draw statistical conclusions more quickly that can go on to inform their decision making. For example, understanding how our guests move through and shop our assets is vitally important in order to provide them with the best possible experience and right mix of exciting brands. Given our total portfolio can have nearly 200 Million guests in a single year it wouldn’t be feasible for a team member to crunch these numbers and draw useful statistical conclusions, whereby an AI model could quite easily do so. However, it’s important to say there will still be a place for our teams. Ultimately it’s the human relationships and industry experience that would allow us to act on this information in a collaborative way with our brand partners. In terms of what I’d like to see more of in the future, I think it’s further collaboration between retail brands and landlords like ourselves. Retail is a rapidly changing marketplace and I feel that delivering the most meaningful experiences to our guests will be done through the process of collaboration.

Gareth: What would you say to yourself when you started your career if you could offer one piece of advice? 

Glynn: Don’t just embrace technology when it lands but actively seek out the latest in the market. Our industry like nearly all others is changing so quickly as new technology lands it’s important to embrace it rather than be left behind. That and try to have a little more fun; enjoy the journey rather than focussing on the end goal. 

Read the Data and Technology issue of Retail Destination here

This trend can significantly enhance a shopping centre’s offering and generate sustainable profitability if landlords and operators utilise data insights to effectively plan and measure their leisure pivot. Proven benefits include driving footfall, increasing dwell time, and enhancing customer experience. Strong communication with tenants can also help retailers be part of the journey so that everyone can capitalise on the potential of new lifestyle destinations. 

Tenant Relations

You must be armed with accurate data and analytics to guide you and your brand partners through any changes for successful implementation. 

Retail Advantage is a powerful insights platform with tools to help you measure and make wins. An accurate, current view of the data is essential to understand whether visitors who engage in competitive socialising activities spend more time at the shopping centre and which conditions turn longer visits into increased spending in retail stores, restaurants or other entertainment venues. Here are some important things to consider and measure for successful implementation: 

• Impact on Existing Tenants: Data-backed insights will help you assess how new attractions affect current tenants. Increased foot traffic can benefit nearby stores, but noise or crowds might be a concern. A trusted view of KPIs will arm your launch and help address any teething issues.
• Synergies: Identify opportunities for alliances between the new attraction and existing tenants. For example, a mini-golf course next to a family restaurant could be mutually beneficial.

• Communication is key: By maintaining open and transparent communication with existing tenants, you can effectively address their concerns and manage their expectations. Retail Advantage provides a Retail Community & Insights Hub, a platform designed to foster collaboration and achieve the best performance. This ensures that your tenants have up-to-date information, enhancing the overall success of implementation.
• Community Engagement: Competitive socialising venues may host events and special promotions that can foster not only tenant synergy but also customer engagement. Strengthening community presence can increase loyalty and garner support from local residents, further driving traffic and sales opportunities.

Incorporating leisure in a data-oriented way will win competitive advantages. As consumer preferences shift towards experiential shopping and entertainment, properties that offer unique and engaging activities are more likely to stand out in a crowded market.

Schedule a demo to see Retail Advantage in action 

Image of Hollywood Bowl courtesy of our client Resorts World Birmingham

Aside from the fact Ratcliffe works remotely from Monaco, Raconteur focuses frustration on the failure of simplistic evaluations to measure personnel productivity: 

In his message to staff, Ratcliffe cited a 20% drop in email traffic at one of his other businesses when it experimented with working at home on Fridays. His comments highlight the fact that too many businesses focus on the inputs, rather than the outputs of desk-based workers. An employee’s value can’t be determined by the number of emails they fire off. In fact, having to constantly respond to messages often gets in the way of people being able to perform the more important parts of their job.

Sam Forsdick, Raconteur

Quoting research from Stanford University, the available data actually points to an increase in productivity when companies implement hybrid working, albeit a very slight one. Either way, a preoccupation with emails does not fully reflect where the work of today and tomorrow will be effectively performed. 

Technology, AI and augmented analytics are also rapidly influencing how we work. For example, we have implemented tools in our insights platforms, such as Retail Advantage, to support collaborative work, no matter where your teams are based. One new feature is “in-context chat”, which runs alongside interactive visualisations of multiple datasets. This collaborative tool not only boosts efficiency but also encourages idea generation, user experience and contribution.

Whether you manage a Premier League football club or a portfolio of Retail Destinations, measuring productivity effectively to improve performance is key. Read the Raconteur article here, and get in touch to see tools like Retail Advantage in action. 

Book a demonstration to explore how our data experience platforms are making a difference

From challenges to opportunities, the morning focused on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and anti-social behaviour with difficult and emotionally charged sessions, before moving on to the evolution of places and AI’s role in that journey, where the mood was upbeat in embracing change through collaboration. 

Gareth Jordan, ART’s Director, chaired a reflective session following AI presentations from Alex McCulloch, Director at CACI and Ross Powell, Technologies Director at JLL. The panel discussion delved into current approaches to insights and strategy through data and a grounded view on how that continues to evolve for both the full price and outlet sectors. It was important to debunk some myths surrounding AI to understand its capabilities and limitations for retail destinations. Aside from agreeing that AI is not about to replace our jobs, it could be said that jobs might be taken by people using AI! Seriously though, the consensus was to enhance roles, rather than replace them, with new technology, making tasks easier and decisions better and faster.

Alex Petit, Head of Data & Insights at Global Mutual, set the tone in answer to Gareth’s first question about the key components of active management. “We’ve spoken a lot about data, and data can be scary, but I wanted to make a point about active asset management and the success factor is you in the room.” Alex elaborated: “The last 12 months have seen a lot of activity from an investment perspective, and a recurring question I always get is around measuring the value of active asset management. This is where Retail Advantage is a valuable tool and other data pointers, which are really helping us to measure value. So understanding how a centre is performing, what’s happening from a turnover perspective, what sales coverage you get… so I think it’s a good way to introduce the subject – yes it’s about data, but it’s about you, because you are the ones producing the good work, and we are just here to measure it.”

The discussion moved on to the important KPIs when approaching Sales Performance insights and how data is being used on a daily basis to inform decisions. Glynn Edwards – Trading Director at Landsec, explained that while they use fairly traditional KPIs like sales, density, and things you would expect to see, Landsec has made good headway in the volume of data with AI, bringing better coverage. “But when you look at sales, one thing that has changed quite dramatically is what is included in that number. You look at the introduction of click & collect, digital sales in a physical store, and all of a sudden the success of a particular store is a lot more confusing. You may have a brand that does not make significant money from the store, yet they consider it a successful store, so you need to look at the value from a different perspective. That has been a fundamental change, so understanding the ‘halo effect’ through footfall monitoring and customer data is important.” 

Alex answered next, “Just to add to that, it’s super important to understand what’s happening within the four walls, but it’s also very important to triangulate sales with catchment data – demographics, mobility and banking data. People who know me know I am the queen of bad analogies, so I’m sorry, but I am living up to my reputation. First, it is really important to understand what slice of the pie you have. In a cost-of-living crisis, the pie may have shrunk, so understanding that the slice of the pie isn’t growing is an opportunity to understand what really matters to you, your investors, or your shareholders. So it’s great to know what’s happening inside the box, but relating it to the catchment is really important to measure share of wallet evolution.”

Kenny Murray, General Manager at McArthurGlen Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet and Regional Retail Lead for UK & Canada, brought in the evolution of how we treat data: “Cheshire Oaks Opened 29 years ago this month, and in the old days, the data we used to get from brands was very transactional. You take the sales data to calculate the rent, but I think because we are retailers, we are naturally curious, and we realised there was much more we could do with that data. And it wasn’t just about density and sales return; it was also about what the store commercial was like, what the units they were selling were, and what the average selling price was. What would we see happening in terms of average unit price – was it going up? Or was it going down? And also looking at things in terms of asset management, which Alex touched on, the importance of understanding the capture rate.” Kenny explained that this approach is fundamental to their relationships with brand partners, enabling them to understand and resolve any issues. 

Gareth raised a question around regional comparisons and whether this was a useful performance metric. Kenny said, “I think that’s an interesting thing for us, and I think over the last few years, we’ve gotten much better at looking at things from a regional perspective. We’ve identified that the more we can work with a brand partner on the numbers, not just on one location of the business, but across multiple locations, brings a real big opportunity to drive performance overall.” McArthurGlen’s Friends and Family marketing campaign gave a good opportunity to share how they work with brands around KPIs on promotions so that they can understand how to maximise it together. “From day one, when any brand joins a McArthurGlen centre, it’s a partnership,” Kenny added. 

Gareth asked Glynn for his take on regional comparisons and whether “local” brands are still having an impact for Landsec at the moment. Glynn explained that “in terms of geography, there is value in those comparisons, but we also have different destinations with plenty of very different guests. So you could compare them, you get some value, but generally, they are vastly different. So you actually find out more about how different they are. We look at our data using geography, end-use and a whole raft of other metrics. Local brands still absolutely have impact – and in many ways, they’re more important than ever. So many of our retail spaces in the UK now have such a similar lineup of brands driven by their global success and appeal. We all want the biggest Zara, we all want the biggest JD, we all want the biggest Next. Unfortunately, that leads to pretty homogeneous centres, so local brands can be the best way to differentiate and stand out from the crowd.”

Gareth touched on a conversation with host Darren Pearce during the break about security, facial recognition and monitoring, leading to the question of the day: “Are we seeing AI replace humans already?” 

“Not replacing humans. But I think it is making us slicker in terms of the way that we operate,” said Kenny. He described the efficiencies made possible through innovation and the way that the outlet sector has transformed their deliveries of stock – dramatically reducing stockroom size thanks to the use of technology providing up-to-the-minute visibility on the stock movement. 

Alex followed with another compelling example: “We are talking to an F&B operator, and the brand’s background is interesting because the founder used to be an analyst in the banking sector. We are helping him understand and predict the footfall pattern for the F&B unit he’s looking at. Given that he’s using all fresh ingredients, understanding how much to buy on which day or how much could be wasted makes a massive difference between a super profitable unit and just breaking even.” 

Glynn also raised the increasing connection surrounding insights: “I think we probably share more data now than we ever have with brands – and with that, you get far more collaboration.”

Gareth moved on to a potentially divisive question about outlet vs full price, but no boxing gloves were required. Kenny commented, “I think it’s the detail at which the outlet sector works with brands is a big distinguishing difference… I think the full price market has followed for sure. You can definitely see that, but I think we’re still further ahead. And I think that ties into the question you asked about looking at things from a centre perspective or are we looking at things more regionally? If you look at McArthurGlen we are looking at things centrally, we are looking at things regionally and we’re also looking at things at a group level. Brand partners really want to work with us because they understand that we will help them maximise the potential within our centres. And I think that’s the part that outlet retailers need to continue to do, and you see full price working more in partnership with the brand partners, too – looking at how they deliver events and experiences that will drive footfall into the stores.”

Landsec has a mix of both outlet and full price, and Glynn gave his perspective next: “I think they’re probably more similar than they’ve ever been before; people could be in an outlet now and not necessarily realise it, the lines are being blurred, so people just want to shop brands and it does not necessarily matter.” 

Alex agreed that they are getting closer and closer and raised the benefits of Global Mutual having full price and outlet destinations with the technologies that cover both. However, she raised one big difference in how valuers value outlets vs full price: “Full price is seeing more and more turnover rents, and if you think of churning tenants in an outlet, it is something that is viewed very positively because you can keep on growing your densities. Sadly, when it comes to shopping centres where most investors want longevity and a very stable income, having that churn means that valuers take a dimmer view of that. So the valuation system needs to evolve.”

Apart from the light-hearted questions Gareth finished on courtesy of AI using ChatGPT, Glynn ended with an interesting point comparing the last decade’s predictions around the death of bricks and mortar due to online shopping with fear surrounding job losses from AI. He quoted share of market statistics from an earlier presentation, explaining that the opposite has happened and that online sales have been going down for the last three to four years. “We will find a new balance between the two, but the reality is that we learn to adapt to it; we have brought it into our everyday lives, and the same will happen with AI,” concluded Glynn. 

Whether you want to understand how to get more from the data you collect or learn more about how the industry is using AI-enabled tools to simply and quickly achieve connection and collaboration, let’s discuss.

Stay tuned for next year’s line-up for Retail Destination Live