Festive season retail insights from Attacq CEO Jackie van Niekerk
The popular super regional shopping centre Mall of Africa in Waterfall City, Midrand, in which Attacq owns a majority share, delivered excellent trading results as measured in turnover and footfall during the festive season in 2023. Attacq CEO Jackie van Niekerk shared her views regarding these uplifting trading conditions during a recent RSG Geldsake on Moneyweb interview with Tinus de Jager.
Van Niekerk says she’s always reticent to predict trading conditions over the festive season beforehand. In retrospect, now that the figures are in, she indicates that Attacq is positively surprised. “Keeping real inflation in mind, we could see some indication of positive numbers leading up to the Christmas period. Regarding inflation, Woolworths, for instance, indicted early in January that their real inflation numbers were trending between eight and nine percent at the end of last year. Although Mall of Africa’s 12.7% festive turnover increase is good, we shouldn’t be blinded by it due to the impact of real inflation.
“The major positive indicator for us is the strong growth in the mall’s footcount, which increased 9.6%. She says based on Attacq’s quantitative behavioural data, “this could mean Mall of Africa increased its retail centre market share over the festive season. It shows that our team manages the mall well and that our audiences like what they see in the mall.”
As far as macro trends go, Van Niekerk believes the impact of the Covid pandemic is thoroughly out of the economic system and that the retail market has recovered. “I’m still not convinced there is more money in the system though, because while our malls are trading well, we know that some other shopping centres outside our group are perhaps losing market share to us.
“It could be that, while fewer local families may have gone away on holiday, all indications are that the Western Cape benefitted from an increase in international tourism. If we look at the full, positive picture of our malls countrywide, my view is that the combination of increased staycations and tourism, plus market share gains, led to a positive performance for our retail assets at Attacq.”
A significant reason for Attacq’s retail success is the close relationships the company’s malls maintain with shop owners. “The most important factor is customer service,” Van Niekerk believes. “This includes the client services we offer to our malls and tenants, as well as the way in which they treat their customers in turn. We work closely with shops in our malls to maximise relevance for each centre’s audience.”
She says the younger generation actively seeks out better client service. As responsible shoppers they also look for trustworthy products and are aware of how and where products are made, which plays a role in their shopping behaviour.
Regarding the ability of retailers to weather the current difficult macro-economic environment, Van Niekerk says South Africans are always ready to make a plan to survive and thrive. “One of many tough challenges for retailers to navigate, for instance, is how to get their merchandise out of our ports and into their shops timeously. Logistical delays have a massive impact on retailers big and small.
“Despite these challenges, we are positive due to the fact that our shopping centres attract significant numbers of visitors, which helps drive individual retailers’ success.”
Another encouraging factor that helps retailers is the fact that loadshedding does not exist in Attacq’s retail centres. “We have invested significant capital in power generation to negate the impact of loadshedding on our tenants and customers. This naturally increases the cost of managing a shopping centre. Our teams on the ground must be innovative in their management efforts to ensure efficiency under significant cost pressure. I’m glad to say that our Attacq retail teams excel at innovation. We strongly adhere to a “Boer maak ’n plan” philosophy to get things done even under adverse circumstances,” Van Niekerk explains.
“We work closely with our tenants to overcome issues. We analyse a situation together and manage it as partners in a way that will lead to a better outcome for all. This is what gives us hope; the way in which South Africans all pull together to persevere, even under the most difficult of circumstances”, she enthuses.
Listen to the full interview here