In the last blog post I talked briefly about the pandemic and its impact. This time I would like to touch on a subject much closer to my heart…Shopping and a cheeky Nandos!

My ‘local’ shopping centre is the Trafford Centre. It’s a huge complex on the M60, making it easy to get to from neighbouring towns. Every time I watch the news, Intu, the owner of the Trafford Centre, seems to be a topic of conversation.

Recently, they seem to have taken a turn for the worst, as they dived into administration in June with a hefty £4.5bn debt – Covid 19 strikes again ?

However, like most other fatalities during the pandemic, the Trafford Centre and the larger physical retail world had many existing health issues.

In many ways the pandemic was an accelerator in the way that it had forced change that would’ve taken years to happen. This is where the problem lies with the Trafford centre as they no longer have the monopoly when it comes to bringing the customers and the retailers together. Habits changed when the UK lockdown came into play as online spending rose to its highest proportion on record in May. They accounted for 33.4% of total spending, compared with 30.8% in April, according to the Office for National Statistics. 

Shopping centre landlords such as Intu rely on retailers for their revenues. But in recent years, stores have been asking landlords for rent reductions due to the pressures they are under and this was another major contributing factor that led to its demise. If I take me and my friends as an example, the Trafford Centre is a great place to hangout, I may buy some fast food or a coffee but we go into the shops mainly to see products, which I largely search for cheaper prices online – the shopping centre becomes a showroom.

The coronavirus lockdown imposed by the government on 23 March didn’t help them either and meant that rent collection fell even further for retail landlords. Shop landlords typically collect rent on a quarterly basis but when UK retailers had to pay rent for the three months to 29 September in late June, just 14% of the £2.5bn due was paid. It seems that the physical retail world is like a ‘pack of cards’ and the struggling retailers are pulling the Trafford centre down with them.

The shopping centre needs to think how it is relevant in an online world and reinvent itself. Similarly, large chains like Debehams who are an anchor store at Trafford Centre need to look at whether they are merely showrooms for online shoppers or can entice people to visit AND buy.

Debenhams itself seems to be in a predicament…they too, like Intu are currently in administration, but for Debenhams it is the second time. Something surely seems to be going wrong for the retailer. The company has simply been slow to adapt its strategy to take full advantage of online consumers. This has been seen time and time again with the likes of M&S and House of Fraser. Secondly, they fail to keep up with changing consumer tastes and trends, take me and my friends for example again, when we go to the Trafford centre we aren’t interested in shopping at debenhams, as i have said before – it becomes a showroom for products which others would later search for at cheaper prices online. 

Lastly, let’s talk about something very close to me, a restaurant by the name of Nando’s. You can’t really go wrong with a cheeky Nando’s, it is first-rate food at mediocre prices. The reason why it is so popular is that it takes a ‘common’ product and makes it consistently well at a variety of budgets and appetites, whilst also being fairly healthy, like a ‘posh KFC’. You can come in a huge group or all alone. You can be halal or vegetarian. You can be on a ten minute-break between shifts or looking to waste two hours before a train, and still eat in Nando’s. As well as this, the Nando’s in the Trafford centre is placed next to one of the entrances, so a great location, like other Nandos, helps foot traffic.