The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)’s third Retail Connections in London last week, was ‘best yet’, according to international retailers. Retailers attending this year included Mango, Primark, The Deichmann Group, Foot Locker, FNAC, Levi Strauss, The Body Shop, Lindex, Camaieu and, for the first time, Abercrombie and Fitch. A large number of growing retailers such as Desigual and Melissa Shoes were also attracted by the opportunity to meet with a significant number of developers on the same day.
The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)’s third Retail Connections in London last week, was ‘best yet’, according to international retailers. Retailers attending this year included Mango, Primark, The Deichmann Group, Foot Locker, FNAC, Levi Strauss, The Body Shop, Lindex, Camaieu and, for the first time, Abercrombie and Fitch. A large number of growing retailers such as Desigual and Melissa Shoes were also attracted by the opportunity to meet with a significant number of developers on the same day.
Sixteen of Europe’s biggest shopping centre development companies were also in attendance including ECE Projektmanagement, Unibail Rodamco, SES Spar European Shopping Centres, Sonae Sierra, Neinver, Ikea MOS, Ivanhoe Cambridge, MAB, Trigranit as well as Aerium Finance and Henderson Global Investors.
Ermine Amies, Managing Director of ICSC in Europe, said: 'Our on-line booking system ensured that retailers and developers came with meetings pre-booked throughout the day. Deals were still being negotiated behind closed doors at 7pm in the evening- two hours after the event was supposed to have finished and we are already being asked about next year’s Retail Connections.'
Over the last three years ICSC’s Retail Connections, the dedicated leasing business meeting for the European retail real estate sector, has grown as retailers acknowledge the value of doing business directly with the leasing teams within developers responsible for hundreds of shopping centres across Europe. In total, some 159 retailers attended this year's event.