Orchard Road Too Cluttered?

If you’ve read my earlier post about Orchard Road going through a face lift, I think you may agree with an article on the Straits Times which states: Too Many Malls In Orchard?

I think there’s two ways of looking at it. Firstly from the retailers point of view, it would mean more competition, much much more.With every new mall opening, it would mean an additional 100 retail shops within the mall? All within a short stretch of road. Imagine the competition.

Most of our estate malls have lost their exclusive themes. They have the same stores like, fast food, foodcourts, boutiques etc. The same goes about when single movie can be released practically in almost all cinemas across Singapore. Though convenient for consumers, its bad for retailers & businesses. Hence most retail businesses hardly survive after few months or years.

From the shoppers perspective, locals won’t pay the premium of buying things from Orchard Road. We’ll probably go window shopping and at most come out with a small bag or two with some groceries than any branded goods. The potential shoppers are actually tourists.

For example, would you purchase an LCD TV from an expensive store in Orchard Road, or would you rather buy it off a neighbourhood store, possibly saving you 5% – 8%? Note its still the same product, same model, same warranty conditions.

However a point to note, many young people today don’t just “shop till they drop dead”. They shop till bankruptcy. True that in the very short term it will boost our economy, but looking ahead this will result in more debts which will worsen the recession.

Here are some estimated figures about Singapore’s famous shopping district:

1. 4.5 mil square feet of retail space in Orchard Road
2. 5.8 million square feet of retail space expected to be added between this year and 2013 in Orchard Road
3. 3 Number of new malls opening in Orchard Road between July and December 2009
4. 1.1 million square feet of retail space at the three new malls
5. 2km total distance of Orchard Road
6. 800 F&B outlets in Orchard Road
7. 7.2 square feet of retail space per capita as of last year
8. 21% of Singapore’s total private retail space concentrated in Orchard Road

I’d like to end off with a very insightful comment left by an ST reader:

like everything in life; there will be winners and losers.
The losers will be the hapless,the forgotten, the insolvent.
The winners will be the developers, the banks and the lawyers.

Full article and comments can be found here

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 2:48 am and is filed under Business, Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.