Quote:
Originally Posted by Echoes
I don't understand what else you were expecting? The vacant Sears space is enough of a liability for them to fill... they're supposed to expand the mall right now to fill in the corner too?
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I sure hope they don’t see Sears leaving as a liability. That’s been the best thing to happen to that mall in a long time.
Our mall downtown is lacking affordable apparel brands like Simons, Zara, H&M, Bershka, Steve Madden, Top Shop at The Bay, a larger Lululemon, and many many other similar stores that have perfected the Brick & Mortar model. Many other cities have these 10,000 + sqf stores with less population than us. Most don’t want to set up here because of the lack of an appropriate space, don’t set up in suburbs which is all the free space we have, flight costs here, and not having anyone move to a city with bad climate.
Michael Kors could be considered our most high end profitable store here - the only reason they located here is because they saw that La Senza opened here. There’d be no Michael Kors here without La Senza, and now Michael Kors is one of the top grossing stores in the mall. Other brands basically exactly like Michael Kors are Coach, Hugo Boss (Caswells sells Hugo but I never go there because it’s not connected to anything in the 8 months of winter), etc.. all could set up shop here.
Saskatoon’s midtown mall manager is obviously not selling this city properly.
Here’s a great list of future prospects:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life...ticle31915380/
The modern mall is not dying. They’re just adapting to being both online and in Brick and Mortar. I personally will never be buying my Coach handbags or Zara pants online before I try them on. In fact - Zara’s app actually lets you scan clothes tags at the store and just buy them online. Stores like that are why Hudson’s Bay and Sears have died. To stress - these are not out of the ordinary priced brands and are all priced similar to the stores we have in Saskatoon today.
And don’t get me started on our Hudson’s Bay... I was just at their about to close Lord and Taylor store on 5th Ave in New York and I could barely even buy things even though they were all like 70% off just because the layout of that store was so bad. Middle Man stores like The Bay will not thrive anymore - especially when they haven’t put in or tried to steam clean their carpets for over 30 years. That place is honestly gross.
Saskatoon is losing a ton of sales traveling to Edmonton shoppers. Midtown’s management could close that leak. Sorry if I seem stark, but Regina’s downtown mall is beating us immensely with smarter management (free parking after 5pm if I’m correct, and overal better stores). We can do better. If stores listed above are saying no to us, we’re not selling Saskatoon right. We have a gorgeous city with one of the highest average weekly earnings in the country that deserves more recognition on the retail side of things. Midtown’s current business model is teaching people like myself to make a habit out of driving to West Edmonton Mall before Christmas.