Many more malls in Kuala Lumpur. Too much retail therapy?
The biggest one of them all would be the Lalaport Mall @ BBCC with 1.4 million NLA sq ft. Okay, this is within the Golden Triangle but it is not that far away (less than 5km away) from The Exchange TRX Mall in distance and also in size too. The Exchange TRX Mall is 1.3 million NLA sq ft. Before everyone can say wah… there’s also the Merdeka 118 Mall yeah which is definitely within the vicinity and this is 900,000 NLA sq ft.
Maybe three of them could do a visit all three within the same day kinf of co-operation? 4 hours each? Never say never. Malls can work together if their enemies are all the other existing malls? 🙂 Yes, of course if it’s completed, we must visit all three and see if all three could have more than half of all different brands within the mall. If that happens, then at least every mall would attract visitors. Else, visiting just one mall meant we have visited all the malls.
This is what Rahim & Co says in their report
“The malls within Kuala Lumpur held up against the disruptive period and no closures of major malls were reported thus far. However, the pressure was more on retails tenants who had suffered from the sharp drop in consumer demand.”
This comment is both positive as it showed resilience and yet at the same time, it sounded a warning. Malls are okay does not mean their tenants could survive. Now, ever wonder what happens to the malls when their tenants do not survive? Well, there’s nothing to visit in the malls anymore. So, to all the malls, please be savvy to this fact and do best to ensure the tenants do not close shop. It is not that they wanted to delay their rental payments yeah.
Conclusion (my own 2 cents)
Malls do not close because of competition from online. They need to work together. Imagine a new brand trying to sell you very expensive handbags but you have never seen how high-end their retail shops are before, would you buy? I mean after you buy, your friends may not even know or seen the brand before! However, malls will be competing against one another and it’s always the better malls which will ‘kill off’ the less competitive malls. Especially if the car parks are still SO EXPENSIVE once all the malls are open. Happy understanding.
The full report by Rahim & Co can be downloaded here.
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