COVER STORY
Vindico has always been at the intersection of offer, environment and experience, seeing the development equation in its granular detail by juggling the deals, spaces and brands that come together to bring what their clients plan, and customers expect, to life.
Vindico CEO & Managing Director, Richard Kim with Anuj Kejriwal, CEO & Managing Director of ANAROCK Retail: a strategic partnership offering integrated leasing and delivery services in India.
play a role in retail,” explains Marc. “We diversified our steel supply chain in the US and started working with Katerra, a multi-billiondollar start-up with traction bringing these methods to large scale construction. We admire what they are achieving, and it turns out that we share a key client and retail project in India. We look forward to seeing where this goes.” Peter continues, “We have, unsurprisingly, experienced a stalling of activity in the new shop and restaurant delivery across our markets, but are now starting to see an industry leaning into the task of understanding how physical space will be used, valued, funded, and delivered. Despite the alarmism, fundamental change is incremental. We will restart with the delivery processes we all know but expect to see modular solutions, and the funding structures that come with them play a role sooner than we otherwise might have.” The dependency between Landlords and Tenants has always been top-of-mind for a business defined by managing the opening expectations of each: always agitating, and advocating for both. “We were fortunate to see inside the travel retail model as part of the Heathrow Terminal 5 project,” explains Row. “Negotiations
based on shared data, profit and loss forecasts and fitout buy-backs were revelations. We have evangelised our airport insights back into the shopping centre world ever since, and it now looks as if the whole industry is having to head this way. Solving turnover rent and cleverly using limited capital are high on the agenda.” The emerging commercial relationships will scale the availability of retail space to new brands and business models, but this comes with pitfalls. “In delivery terms, we talk of the three C’s - capability, capital and commitment. We know that a tenant needs all three to open on time, and in the new landscape we are using the levers we can now pull to provide those for brands who do not have traditional retail businesses behind them. We are moving to the middle of the relationship - enabling, rather than just coordinating.” Marc and Peter are backing the role physical space will play in a more sophisticated relationship between brands and their customers and look forward to Vindico playing its part in reinventing the relationship between retail and real estate. If history is any predictor of the future, the recession in 2030 will be the next opportunity to do it all again.
Vindico celebrated the opening of its 10,000th store opening by giving 10,000 days of schooling to launch ‘Opening Opportunity’, an initiative that creates the opportunity for education with every brand Vindico helps open.
08. RETAIL PEOPLE . JUL-SEP 2020
