Magazines Archives - 2010 January

Singapore’s recovery augurs well for retailers in 2010
Story 7 - Focus

Retail Outlook 2010 – The Year Ahead reports that Singapore was officially out of the recession was
further confirmed in November, when the Singapore Department retail sales grew 6% from September, after factoring in seasonal adjustments despite a 4.4% decline in year-on-year retail sales.

Furthermore, excluding motor vehicles, retail sales slipped by only 0.8% from 2008, by far the smallest
decline in the industry since the onset of the downturn.

Against the grim backdrop of economic contractions, Singapore’s retail scene continued to bustle with activity the past year. New malls came on stream, as expected, welcomed by crowds of shoppers in the second half of 2009 and, last September, tourist arrivals picked up for the first time in 15 months to almost 800,000, a 7.1% year-on-year growth from the previous year.

Contrary to perceptions that the retail industry in Singapore has come of age, three new malls — Ion Orchard, Orchard Central and, the newest, [email protected] somerset — took centrestage last year, pushing the boundaries of the retail scene as new stores, features and brands market.

“Supply came on quite fierce … We haven’t seen so much supply coming into the market in just one year, and Orchard Road itself [brought on] about one million sqf of retail space,” notes Michael Leong, managing director of Guthrie Consultancy Services Pte Ltd, a subsidiary of Guthrie GTS Limited, and project and marketing manager, as well as retail consultant of nex, the suburban mall in north-eastern Singapore which is expected to open by Q4 this year.

Linda Locke, marketing director of Club 21 Pte Ltd, which carries luxury brands such as Giorgio Armani and Dolce & Gabbana, concurs that the opening of Ion Orchard and the Mandarin Gallery also injected some excitement and energy into the scene.

But, she adds: “The fear of H1N1 at the beginning of the year, on top of the recession, affected tourism which in turn took its toll on sales here. Some would argue that the multiple openings of Orchard Central, Ion, Mandarin Gallery and [email protected], resulted in a rapid increase in retail space that diluted traffic and therefore sales.”

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