The Herald Business Journal


YOUR COUNTY.	YOUR BUSINESS JOURNAL.

Published December 2000

Web-based retailing offers challenges, possibilities
for malls

By Kimberly Hilden
Herald Business Journal Assistant Editor

Malls have felt the impact of Internet-based retailing, but it hasn’t been a fatal blow, said Linda Johannes, General Manager of the Everett Mall.

“Has it devastated us? No,” Johannes said. “Has it brought us to our knees? No. All the things that everyone said were going to happen just like six years ago when catalogs took off — ‘Everybody was going to order by catalog, and it was going to kill the shopping center industry’ — no.”

Last year, e-commerce accounted for about 0.63 percent of retail sales during the fourth quarter, according to the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce.

While that percentage is small, “e-tail has come of age,” then-U.S. Secretary of Commerce William Daley said in March. “Its impact on what consumers know about what they can buy or what they should pay goes far beyond today’s percentage.”

To account for that impact, Johannes said, malls have had to adjust by making a day at the mall “more of an experience” for consumers.

For the Everett Mall, creating an “experience” isn’t a new concept. Take, for instance, the series of Pink Saturdays the mall sponsored a couple of years ago.

“We had one a quarter for two years, and basically it was a Saturday when nothing specific was going on and we just turned the mall into a pink extravaganza,” Johannes said. “We had pink parties.”

There was Polynesian Pink with a Hawaiian theme, Western Pink with a cowboy theme and others, Johannes said. Pink Saturdays were accompanied by “hot pink” sales throughout the mall.

“It was part of the family fun,” Johannes said. “If there was nothing going on, you could take the kids and make a family outing to come to the mall.

“You didn’t necessarily have to buy anything or have to shop. There were enough fun things going on,” she said.

Both the Everett and Alderwood malls offer Halloween trick-or-treating for children in the community. Then there’s the annual arrival of Santa Claus, which attracts the young and young-at-heart. Year-round, the two malls sponsor mall-walking programs, providing a warm, dry place for community members to get a cardiovascular workout.

SnoBiz, the Everett Area Chamber of Commerce-sponsored trade show, is the biggest exhibitor event Everett Mall does all year, Johannes said, and the mall plans on hosting the event again next year.

At the Alderwood Mall, plans for a spring music festival are in the works, Marketing Director Beth Schooley said. Scheduled for May, the festival “is an opportunity for school groups and community music groups to come and perform at the center, and we’re very excited about that new program.”

Along with enticing customers with special events, malls are adjusting to the Internet by getting involved with it themselves: building Web sites and considering the e-commerce possibilities.

“The whole industry is looking at the Web and linkages and maximizing the new tool,” said Johannes, whose mall put up its site, www.everettmall.org, almost a year ago.

The Alderwood Mall expects to begin experimenting with e-commerce through its Web site, www.Mallibu.com, Schooley said, adding that the Internet has had a positive effect on retail sales at the mall.

“We are finding that customers go online to see what’s available and shop around,” she said. “The Internet helps them decide to come to Alderwood Mall and make their purchase here.”

MallibuPlus, an online program Alderwood Mall launched last month, should keep customers coming in as well.

With MallibuPlus, customers register online and provide information about their shopping interests.

Consumers then receive e-mails on store sales, mall events and special members-only promotions geared toward their personal shopping interests.

“MallibuPlus makes it easier for us to give (customers) what they want, when they want it and where,” Schooley said in a news release announcing the program. “MallibuPlus makes it possible for us to provide personal service to our customers.”

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