Westfield Shopping Centre – Good Times?
Written by chameleonfridays on November 3rd, 2008The giant indoor shopping center, Westfield, London has now opened. But is this a good time to be opening?
The country is in recession, cash has become expensive again, over a million homes are rumored to be in negative equity, and the phrase “credit crunch” and “sub-prime lending”, previously terms only used on late night news programs are now in common use.
So why open now? Is it a good time to shop or to open a shop?
There is no doubt that the center is well designed and features a wide selection of shops, including all high street brands. The building itself is very striking, and has received mixed reviews
While the site is massive, its not the worlds biggest shopping mall . That honor currently belongs to West Edmonton Mall, in Alberta Canada (though it depends on how you measure it)
So its not the biggest, its not the best, so why open now?
Firstly when the site was planned the world economic climate could not have been predicted, and once the banks started to crash Westfield’s had to push on with the project. With that said, it is a good time to open a shop. Despite all of the doom and gloom billions will be spent on shopping this Christmas and Westfield looks set to take some of gain market share of that revenue, though at the expensive of others.
After the Christmas rush, and the post Christmas sales, all of the shops will be hurting in the financial climate, but if Westfield s can ride it out to the summer, taking market share from the other companies, when the country comes out of recession in late 2009 early 2010, no doubt WestFields will be in fine form. So Westfields are probably going to be just fine.
But is it a good place to shop? Chameleon Fridays have not road tested it yet, but it comes across well and there will be bargains to be had both in the run up to Christmas and particulary in the January sales.
For those of you that prefer the warm comforts of home and are prepared to run the risks of Royal Mail, you might want to try Westfields biggest Christams competition My Mall.
