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Shopping Centers Today -> May 2002
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MALL GIVES SOME STORES THEIR START
By Debra Hazel
Mall of America might be one of the biggest, most famous malls in the world, but it isn’t above giving the little guy a helping hand.
The megamall’s Retail Development Program has given some retailers their start — and in the case of Randy Heninger, three starts: His bath and body products store, Basin, is his third concept at the mall. He opened a second Basin at Downtown Disney in Anaheim, Calif., early last year, and further expansion of the concept is in the cards, he said.
Both Heninger and his wife had been working for the Internal Revenue Service when a friend who operated a key-chain kiosk persuaded them to try retail. The couple mortgaged their house and maxed out their credit cards to join the friend in opening State Your Name, a 500-square-foot license-plate shop in a bump-back space at the mall’s 1992 debut.
“We worked pretty much all hours, and we loved it,” Heninger said. Some other stores that began at the mall have also gone far. Bedding manufacturer and catalog retailer Select Comfort, which opened one of its first three units at Mall of America, today has about 328 stores, including 22 boutiques inside Bed Bath & Beyond stores.
Television shopping network QVC opened a 2,500-square-foot store at Mall of America in August after testing a 500-square-foot temporary space there. QVC is a poster child for both the mall’s penchant for innovative retail and its corporate sponsorships. The network has become the official broadcast and e-commerce partner for Mall of America, airing live from the center nine times daily and hosting special events.
The Retail Development Program hasn’t changed much since its inception two years before Mall of America’s 1992 debut. The mall’s staff work with entrepreneurs and help find product for them to sell. Staff will then teach the basics of retail, including sourcing, merchandising and presentation.
“Most retailers need to know how to write a business plan, how to make the margins work, how to make their product visually ‘pop,’” said Kathy Rusche, Mall of America director of specialty leasing and sales. The group even has a small supply of fixtures to provide to new tenants.
The Heningers said they benefited a lot from mall specialists in merchandising and design.
“There was no way we could have afforded a designer,” Heninger said.
Some of these tenants have taught Mall of America a few things, too. Carl Olsen, who sold software for 28 years until he was caught in the dot-com implosion, is trying something new for the program — a food service — by opening BeaverTails, a Canadian fried pastry concept with product that, yes, comes in the shape of a beaver tail. Created in the late 1970s in Canada, BeaverTails had begun franchising locations in the United States.
“It appealed to me because it was so different,” Olsen said. He and his brother developed a business plan and approached the mall in June 2001.
Olsen’s unit, located on the second floor, opened the day after Thanksgiving last year and has seen sales build steadily since. In mid-February sales had increased 20 percent over November’s figures. Plans call for eight units in the next five years.
Olsen gives the mall full credit for his initial success.
“When they say something is going to get done, it gets done,” Olsen said.
In 1992 the mall had 42 carts and 20 small wall units; today the Retailer Development Program boasts 71 carts and 18 miscellaneous uses. Despite, or perhaps because of, such successes, the challenge today is finding new product for a mall with 520 stores, Rusche said.
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