Word: malling
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Beijing's golden resources mall ought to be a shopper's paradise. Built on the city's outskirts in 2004, the Art Deco-style center boasts a staggering 6 million sq. ft. (560,000 sq m) of retail space, making it the world's second largest mall, 30% bigger than Minnesota's famed Mall of America, once the largest. Golden Resources accommodates more than 1,000 shops, dozens of restaurants, 230 escalators and an ice-skating rink. On its five floors, you can buy everything from fur coats to exercise equipment to pet supplies...
...missing, though: shoppers. On a recent Monday afternoon, despite blazing temperatures outside, the only crowd to be found in the air-conditioned expanse of Golden Resources is a gaggle of shopgirls on their breaks. The few customers loitering around appear to be just window-shopping. Nearly half of the mall's original restaurants shut down in the first year after opening. The parking garage's 10,000 spaces host a handful of cars. Xiao Chen, a shoe salesman, states the obvious: business stinks. "Monthly sales here are not as much as a weekly sales in other stores located in those...
...where bigger is usually viewed as better, so it's no surprise that retail-property developers seem to be trying to outdo each other with giant construction projects. The mainland already hosts the world's largest shopping center, the 7 million sq. ft. (650,000 sq m) South China Mall in the southern manufacturing city of Dongguan. Like Golden Resources, South China Mall suffers from a dearth of stores and shoppers. Yet more megamalls are on the way. By 2010, China expects to be home to seven of the world's 10 largest shopping centers...
...China's mall woes stem from a bubble-forming combination of inexperience, exuberance and excess capital. Local mall developers are often first-generation capitalists looking to reinvest riches reaped from the booming residential sector, Parker says, and many lack expertise in running successful commercial projects. Local governments push through new mall projects because they hope to enhance infrastructure and increase commerce. Meanwhile bankers, eager to expand their loan portfolios, become too-willing accomplices to overbuilding. Parker calls it a recipe for "the perfect storm." Banks in a mature market "provide the sanity check to a developer, but in China, there...
...There's also scant attention to populating malls with the right mix of shops. Alan Liu, Shanghai-based managing director of Colliers International's North Asia practice, says most try to attract upscale brands. "Everyone thinks they need Prada, Gucci, Fendi in every project, even smaller ones," Liu says. "Well, the vast majority of customers won't spend their money on upmarket products like that." Indeed, at Beijing's Shin Kong Place recently, office worker Zhang Ting, 28, called the center's many high-end international brands "prohibitively expensive." While hundreds of local office workers like Zhang crowded the downtown...