EXPERIENCE - High street retail in best shopping cities
The main focus of the Fund’s Experience portfolio is on individual high street shops or clusters of shops in prime shopping areas in major Dutch city centres. These city centres have retained their market share and will continue to do so in the future. Shopping for fashion and lifestyle products is changing drastically. Because consumers now have a wider choice in terms of how they buy fashion and life-style products (online or offline), the differentiating potential of shopping cities is becoming an ever greater factor in their success. The presence of food and beverage is playing an increasingly important role here. Consumers prefer cities that offer cultural attractions and a wide range of catering establishments, in addition to a varied range of fashion and lifestyle stores. The combination of these factors creates attractive locations offering the experience factor that contemporary consumers see as an essential part of a day of shopping. We believe that shopping cities offering this fun or ‘Experience’ factor will be the most future-proof.
For strategic asset management and acquisition purposes, Bouwinvest and its Research department have developed a ranking tool for the best shopping cities and high streets in the Netherlands on the basis of footfall, catchment area, consumer numbers, rent per m2, vacancy rates and average income. The best shopping streets are determined using Bouwinvest’s Top shopping streets ranking, which provides an overview of the most attractive shopping streets in the Netherlands, including shopping streets outside the Top 15 shopping cities. We look at indicators at regional, shopping area and street level. These include indicators such as (growth in) the number of residents in a catchment area, the average income level, the number of tourists, the presence of the hospitality sector and the number of passers-by.