Future of shopping lies in the FATTi boom boon

Adrian Maguire

The solution enables site analytics, giving Atterbury and its partners' retail property managers an all-round view of shopping centre performance and customer behaviour. This will help it create better shopping experiences, which means happier customers. The result are better enjoyed and better performing shopping malls.

Negotiations are currently at an advanced stage with a number of different mall owners, such as Attacq, to roll out this technology to various malls.

Maguire says, "Never before has it been so easy to connect with specific visitor groupings. Promotions can be targeted at specific audiences, grouped by age, gender, interest, location and even the times they visit a shopping centre. Essentially, we are merging the best of retail shopping with the best of online shopping.

"We know that it's more important than ever for retail property professionals to be led by consumer changes. Fierce competition from Internet and other shopping channels, coupled with the increasing expectation for a memorable shopping experience, means that shopping centres need to do better to succeed. Those that monitor and respond to emerging customer patterns have the best chance of outperforming."

Cloud based software

By forming FATTi, the company is poised to manage the changing environment in shopping centres. The innovative cloud-based software combines information from a wide range of sources, to provide an unprecedented 360-degree view of its business. It also gives a unique insight into untapped opportunities across any single shopping centre and for the company and its partners' entire portfolio of retail properties.

"By deploying this software or app, with the necessary hardware through our centres, a broad range of metrics become available to our centre managers. With this, they can quickly calculate immediate priorities for attention, revealing previously unnoticed performance patterns and enabling sharper decisions," he says.

This is a 100% custom-made solution for the company, developed by combining the talents of market leaders in different disciplines to create a single value proposition, which starts and ends with the customer.

The value proposition uses information from a mall's end-users, to create completely personalised solutions that deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time.

Combining the social benefits of the shopping environment and private digital channels, the bricks-and-mortar mall and its retailers, can now effortlessly interact with visitors and potential visitors within the mall catchment area.

Successful JV

In the first joint venture, Atterbury and Attacq recently introduced this technology at their new jointly owned R1.3 billion Newtown Junction shopping centre in the Joburg CBD, which went live in December 2014, with good initial results. Other shopping centres are set to follow, including The Grove Mall in Namibia, followed by Garden Route Mall and Lynnwood Bridge Retail in Pretoria.

Offering omni-channel to retailers

Retailers at participating malls will benefit greatly also. Soon, all of the company's centres and those of it JV partners will offer retailers the power to unlock more meaningful omni-channel shopping experiences, by seamlessly merging mall and online retail together.

"By allowing visitors to register and download the mall application, the participating malls can offer their tenants the true benefit and convenience of loyalty-based promotions, discount tokens, mobile online payment for parking and access to world-class Wi-Fi. This is a typical package, but benefits can be varied for each shopping centre. The app is optimised for iPhone and Android, with Windows next in line."

Atterbury and its partners will also see rewards, by ensuring every square metre of retail space generates the maximum return on investment.

"Attracting visitor volumes simply isn't enough. With FATTi, we aim to encourage a steady flow of traffic around every area of any centre. The next step is taking it to market systematically. We are looking at an aggressive rollout that, at first, focuses on shopping centres larger than 25,000 sqm. Of course, the system offers value for all sizes of shopping centres and even mixed used developments, but the benefits of analytics are exponential for larger malls, so this is the best place to start," he concludes.