Mall Owner Skirts Web Competitors

Shopping mall owner and manager Glimcher Realty Trust has come up with a tenant-mix formula that’s outsmarting the Internet competition that has been threatening the success of its retail properties. Glimcher’s malls are increasingly renting to businesses that provide services and products that can’t be bought online. Hair salons, dine-in movie theaters, and even make-it-yourself pottery stores are filling vacant space left behind by traditional clothing-only retailers, especially at Glimcher’s Scottsdale Quarter mall, in Arizona.

Offering an experience that can’t be easily replicated on the Web is part of the mall giant’s strategy to compete with the Internet. It isn’t alone. Many developers are adding more service-type tenants to malls. Hospitality-based tenants like hair salons can have customers coming in weekly or monthly, rather than once a year to buy, say, back-to-school clothes. And this business model may protect owners’ revenue post-recession. Scottsdale Quarter now makes the highest figure of any Glimcher mall.