Superbrand Plaza has a vacancy rate of 25%, and "China's No. 1 MALL" has been in and out for 20 years

On the first floor of Superbrand Mall, a vacant row of shops. (Southern Weekend reporter Jiang Minyu/Photos)

Superbrand Plaza, one of the symbols of Shanghai Lujiazui, has been in operation for 20 years and is less than 500 meters away from the Oriental Pearl. According to the Pudong New Area Archives Bureau, it used to be the largest shopping mall in the country.

On October 18, 2002, the Superbrand Mall, with an investment of 450 million US dollars, a total of 13 floors and a total construction area of 241,000 square meters, was opened. At its peak in 2007, it had 100% occupancy and at its peak, it had 250,000 people a day.

But for months, Superbrand Mall has attracted attention because of its high vacancy rate.

On August 22, 2022, industry research institute Kerry Asset Management found that among the 20 samples, the highest "vacancy rate" of shops was located in the Superbrand Plaza in Lujiazui business district, which had reached 34%.

Kerry Asset Management also said that due to the availability of data, 34% use "vacant shops" as the accounting standard, which is different from the usual method of calculating the "vacancy rate" based on leased area.

How empty is Superbrand Mall? On November 6, it was a Sunday, and Southern Weekend reporters saw that the flow of people here was not small, but many shops were vacant and blocked by fences.

Around September 20, Southern Weekend reporters took stock of about 115 floors except for the ninth and tenth floors of the viewing restaurant and the three-story underground parking lot, and a total of about 115 shops on the remaining floors were fenced or unoperated. During the same period, there were 13 vacant stores in the surrounding shopping malls and 8 IFC stores.

According to Dianping, on September 20, 373 businesses settled in Superbrand Mall, and by November 7, the number had decreased to 369. One interviewee said that in mid-October, two cat shops and retail stores on the fifth floor closed down.

Looking back at the development history of Superbrand Mall, it is not the first time that the vacancy rate is too high.

"China's No.1 Mall"

Everyone who has come to the main entrance of Superbrand Plaza can hardly ignore the four-faced Buddha on the right side of its entrance.

It has four sides, eight ears, eight arms, eight hands, and is golden throughout, sitting in a shrine, and the incense in front of it wafts wisps of green smoke. Also known as "Brahma", in Thailand it is considered to be the god of boundless mana and the lord of earthly glory and wealth, and is commonly found in the courtyards of Thai people.

The actual controller of Superbrand Plaza is CP Group, the first foreign enterprise to enter Chinese mainland after the reform and opening up, mainly engaged in feed and breeding industries, and the founder Xie Yichu is originally from Shantou and is a Thai-Chinese. Its well-known brands include Lotus (formerly Yichu Lotus), Chia Tai Variety Show, Dayang Motorcycle and so on.

In 1990, Shanghai Pudong was developed. Two years later, Xie Guomin, chairman of CP Group, announced that in order to complete the commercial facilities in the core area of Lujiazui CBD, he would invest 400 million US dollars to build CP Group's largest investment project in China at that time, Superbrand Mall.

In 1994, CP Group established a subordinate project company, Shanghai Ditai Development Co., Ltd., and the Superbrand Mall, known as "China's first Mall", was officially established.

However, since the establishment of the project, its construction and development have been in twists and turns.

Initially, CP Group planned to contribute $100 million, with the remaining 205 million loans coming from a syndicate of seven banks, including Farmers Bank of Thailand, Bank of Kyoto and Bank of China Bangkok Branch, according to China Business.

However, in the second half of 1997, the financial turmoil swept through Southeast Asia, three of the above-mentioned banks went bankrupt, and the Bank of Kyoto was taken over by the government. After providing a $65 million loan, the syndicate could not afford to inject any more funds.

Li Shaozhu, who was a senior executive vice president of CP Group, once recalled in an interview that the financial turmall caused the Superbrand Mall to stop for more than a year.

In 1999, with the help of relevant government departments in Shanghai, Ditai Company obtained a loan of 50 million US dollars from Chinese banks in the form of equity transfer, and mobilized 200 million US dollars by integrating business in the Chinese market, and the Superbrand Mall was able to restart construction.

In 2002, Superbrand Mall opened. Li Shaozhu once said with confidence that if it is fast for 7 years and slow for 10 years, Superbrand Plaza can recover its investment.

This is not the case. CBN Weekly reported that in the early days of opening, Superbrand Mall tried to position itself as a concentration of international first-line brands, but around 2000, these first-line brands would only open one store in Shanghai, and they all invested in Hang Lung Plaza with a better location that opened at the same time.

Until August 2005, Superbrand Mall was only 45% occupied, and the five floors on the 6th floor and above were almost all vacant.

Events or promotions are rarely organized

Today's Superbrand Plaza, even if the vacancy rate is much easier than when it was at its lowest, it gives people an intuitive feeling of being empty.

For example, September 21 is a Wednesday, and there are few pedestrians in the Superbrand Mall during the evening rush hour. Counting in five minutes, at 17:45, 93 people passed by the FILA fashion store on the third floor, and no one entered; At 18:00, 106 people passed by MUJI, 11 entered; At 18:15, 9 people passed by Tom Bear Game City, and no one entered; At 18:30, 14 people passed by Xiaonanguo restaurant, and 8 people entered... During those five minutes, the only thing Tom Bear's female clerk did was pace back and forth in the doorway.

Superbrand Mall is most lively at lunchtime. On weekdays, white-collar workers in more than 130 office buildings around the area pour in, and many restaurants have to queue up in front of the door. But after half-past one o'clock in the afternoon, silence returned to the place.

It is most idle in the morning, afternoon and after 9 p.m. on weekdays. People who come to wander around the mall can clearly hear the sound of a clerk cutting nails in a passing store, the sound of clerks getting together in twos and threes to talk, and the sound of music coming from the mobile phone of the clerk sitting alone on the floor connection channel brushing TikTok.

"Don't come to step on the pit, come to pay the rent to Chia, the point is that the rent is not cheap." After seven o'clock on Wednesday night, there were no customers, and the clerk of a shoe store leaned on the handrail next to the corridor of the mall to play the popular game "sheep is a sheep." When the Southern Weekend reporter inquired as a merchant who intended to settle in, she directly suggested changing to another shopping mall.

"In June this year, our turnover was only 560,000, the rent was 65,000, and there were labor costs and logistics costs, which were not profitable at all, it was okay not to make money for one or two months, and it would not make money for ten months a year, and the boss was also under great pressure." The clerk pointed to another shoe store next to it that had closed but had not removed the sign, and said that they would not renew the contract after it expired.

She worked in Superbrand Mall for three years and found that before 2020, the business here was not bad, but in the past two years, there have been fewer tourists in Shanghai, and the situation is not as good as before, plus Superbrand Mall rarely organizes events or promotions, and it is less attractive than nearby shopping malls.

"Now this mall only has a little more people on weekends, the source of customers on weekdays is white-collar workers working nearby, there are no big events in the mall, they don't buy much, and they leave after eating at noon." In front of the clerk, a hook hanging from the ceiling, originally used to hang huge advertisements, is now empty.

There were the first Zara, H&M, and Sephora in China

More than a decade ago, the vacancy rate problem of Superbrand Plaza was reversed by Situ Wencong.

In December 2007, the magazine "Shanghai-Hong Kong Economy" founded by the Shanghai Shanghai-Hong Kong Economic Development Association conducted an exclusive interview with Situ Wencong. In this interview, he recalled in detail the transformation of Superbrand Plaza.

In 2005, after losing money for years and changing three presidents in succession, Situ Wencong, who is known as the "golden trader" in the history of China's commercial real estate, and his team took over Superbrand Mall.

After taking office, he spent three months collecting 2,000 survey data from households and individuals, and found that in the next 5-10 years, the most important consumer group in Shanghai shopping malls is not high-end customers, but the middle class, who lack a consumption place that can integrate shopping and parent-child activities.

At the beginning of 2006, Superbrand Mall was repositioned from a "superbrand center" to "the largest family entertainment shopping center in East China".

Situ Wencong once mentioned in an interview that Superbrand Plaza "changed the practice of department stores putting large luxury brands on the first floor, and replaced it with China's first Zara, H&M and Sephora stores", and included bookstores, cafes, cinemas, children's playgrounds and even ice rinks.

Situ Wencong recalled that in early 2006, ZARA was not interested in Superbrand Mall and said that it had considered choosing a site in the Nanjing West Road business district. But he won the opportunity to visit the Spanish headquarters.

For this visit, he and his colleagues spent three overnight to make a 1:300 model of the mall, "so detailed that every floor can be pulled out to see", and it took 52 hours to change passenger planes, propeller planes and cars without direct flights to Spain in Shanghai.

In the end, including ZARA, six of the top ten global general clothing brands in terms of turnover at that time were settled in CP. In 2007, shop occupancy reached 100 per cent, nearly 300 merchants were still waiting in line, and mall rents quadrupled in two years.

But a year later, Mr. Szeto left to join another business investment firm. Southern Weekend contacted Szeto Wencong, but he said it was not suitable to respond to the topic of Superbrand Mall now.

In Lujiazui, Superbrand Plaza has pulled the world's hottest fast fashion brands into China for the first time, gathering in one place, ZARA, H&M, GAP, Uniqlo, Esprit... Crowds everywhere. But today, most of them have left Superbrand Plaza or even out of China.

The aura of Superbrand Mall seems to have dimmed with the disappearance of fast fashion brands in China's deified status.

According to the staff of the mall, the Lotus Supermarket independently operated by CP Group has been closed for two years, and the cinema on the eighth floor has long ceased to be open and is still attracting investment.

In fact, Superbrand Mall is not the core business of CP Group. CP Group's main business is feed, pig breeding and slaughtering, and commercial real estate is only one of its nine business segments. In 2020, CP Group's global revenue was about 82 billion US dollars, which translates to only 0.4% of the turnover of Superbrand Mall.

Vacancy rate 25%

How is the operation of Superbrand Mall, Southern Weekend reporters have been contacting CP Group for nearly ten days without results. There was no response to phone calls and emails, and the mall management did not give interviews.

Among media reports, only Shangguan News has recently received a reply on behalf of Superbrand Plaza. After understanding, it was learned that its information came from the Lujiazui Management Committee. A staff member of the Land Management Commission told Southern Weekend that their information came from a report.

The material mentioned that since 2019, the mall is undergoing a new round of large-scale upgrading and adjustment, and it is planned to complete the overall upgrade in 3 years, but due to the impact of the epidemic, the renovation and improvement of some merchants has been forced to postpone. As of August 2022, the total occupancy rate reached 75%. It is expected that by the end of 2022, 99 new brands will be unveiled in the mall, and the occupancy rate will reach 90%.

In other words, the current vacancy rate is 25%, what is this level?

According to statistics from Huajing Industry Research Institute, in 2021, the average vacancy rate of shopping malls in 20 first- and second-tier cities across the country was 9%. According to Kerry Asset Management, in the second quarter of 2022, the vacancy rate of commercial shopping centers in Shanghai was 7.2%.

"For such large shopping malls, the industry believes that the vacancy rate is relatively healthy to keep below 10%, including the area of stores under renovation, and because of the rapid brand replacement now, the replacement rate of 10%-15% is also normal." Zhuang Diqi, director of Jones Lang LaSalle Shanghai Retail Real Estate, explained to Southern Weekend.

According to the official website of Superbrand Mall, since 2018, the mall has been renovated and transformed in three years, adjusting 8 floors including underground parking lots, the central walkway "Golden Avenue", the façade and other areas, and determining different functional zones for the adjusted floors.

The Hanfu cultural experience store where Yin Lianji works is located on the seventh floor of the mall, and when she moved in last year, the merchants of Superbrand Plaza promised them that the shops on the seventh floor would be fully filled, and the store she worked for would become the main store on the seventh floor, but to date, the merchants Yin Lianji docked with have changed three, and the fence of the vacant shop next to it has never been removed, and a Japanese food store opposite has not been closed.

"The flow of people in this mall is concentrated below the fourth and fifth floors, and few people come up on the seventh floor, and it is difficult for us to drain our own traffic after the epidemic, and the mall has jumped us over to do activities."

At the beginning of the year, Superbrand Plaza held a "Chinese Style Hanfu Awards" event, and models wearing ancient costumes would parade through the museum during the lunch and evening markets. Yin thought that this would be a good opportunity for store promotion, but she did not expect that the parade route arranged by the mall bypassed the store, and the mall management explained, "The parade route can only go around areas with many people."

According to Shangguan News previously reported, due to the epidemic factor, from April to June this year, Superbrand Plaza had reduced the rent of all tenants in the venue by a total of more than 70 million yuan. However, Yin said that according to the requirements for the gradual resumption of work, the store did not open in July and August, but the mall still had to collect two months' rent and increase the rent according to the contract signed when she moved in.

In September, she received a message from the staff of the investment promotion department of Superbrand Mall. Because the store is not doing well, I hope they can leave the lease early so that they can transfer out. "The vacancy rate of the mall is already so high, and the investment promotion has not been effective, and now not only does not give rent reduction, but also drives us away because of the niche, I don't understand why we are not even given half a year's breathing time." After the communication was fruitless, Yin Lianji and the boss also planned to withdraw from Superbrand Plaza.

In fact, the rent of Superbrand Plaza is not rising but falling.

In the "Analysis of Business Districts in China's Key Cities and Business Location Reference" published in 2016, it was mentioned that the average rent price of Superbrand Plaza at that time was 30 yuan / square meter per day. An industry insider told Southern Weekend that around 2016, the average price of 30 yuan was almost the rent standard of Superbrand Mall catering shops, and now it should be sold for only a dozen or twenty yuan, "there will be few shopping center rents going down."

Go to the opposite side

When did the glory of Superbrand Mall begin to be lost? Different respondents have different answers.

In the impression of a curator who often visits the mall, before 2017, Superbrand Plaza was still one of the better shopping malls in Shanghai, and then because the mall was relatively strong, the rent was very high, and the surrounding competition was fierce, many merchants chose to leave after the flow of customers decreased. A shopping mall's cleaning supervisor believes that since the opening of IFC, fewer and fewer people have come to Superbrand Mall to shop.

IFC, opened in 2010 by Sun Hung Kai Properties Limited in Hong Kong, is located just 200 metres from Superbrand Mall. Unlike the fast fashion brands in Superbrand Mall, its layout is almost an all-color luxury.

The official website of IFC also wrote, "The project is across the street from Superbrand Mall, which will just make up for the hidden pain of 'difficult to grow into a forest' in Superbrand Mall." ”

In fact, the positioning of the two is very different. At present, on the public review, the average consumption price of shopping brands in Superbrand Mall is about 1,000 yuan, and most of the IFC is 10,000-30,000 yuan.

According to the data of the real estate industry information platform Yirui and Winshang.com, from 2014 to 2020, the annual turnover of Superbrand Mall is about 3 billion, which has exceeded the industry standard line of 2 billion.

But the gap between it and IFC is also widening. In 2014, both were flat at $2.7 billion. However, by 2020, the annual revenue of IFC has exceeded 10 billion, and the Superbrand Plaza is 2.4 billion. The first Yaohan company, which is also in the Lujiazui business district and opened earlier than Superbrand Mall, also had a turnover of 3.3 billion yuan in 2020.

Also on Wednesday weekdays, after three o'clock in the afternoon, more than ten customers were already waiting in line in front of the Hermès store in the IFC Center, and the outdoor plaza on the basement floor was also full of people who were resting.

There are often queues in front of luxury stores. It has been 17 years since Situ Wencong did market research, and the conclusion that "the most important consumer group in Shanghai shopping malls is not high-end customers, but the middle class" seems to be outdated.

Old shopping malls are also constantly being renovated and renovated. Zhuang Diqi observed that in recent years, Superbrand Plaza and the first Yaohan are undergoing overall internal changes, but the first Yaohan renovation time is earlier, and now it has been carried out in the second round, and the round of transformation of the Superbrand Plaza has not yet ended.

Zhuang Diqi mentioned that Superbrand Mall is also gradually introducing some more trendy brand stores, such as Bubble Mart and Holly. These shops do have better foot traffic than others.

In 2021, the Yirui platform has conducted statistics on the brand changes of various shopping malls in Shanghai, and in the first half of the year, the brand renewal rate of Superbrand Mall has been in the forefront.

A young man who lives nearby told Southern Weekend that after 2018, he often came to Superbrand Mall, and found that some trendy stores were often added in the mall, but such stores are branches, and you can go elsewhere, and the popularity of Superbrand Mall is not high.

The industry insider said that the competition in major shopping malls is fierce now, "you will find that most shopping malls in Shanghai do activities almost every weekend". But according to merchants, this does not include Superbrand Mall.

Southern Weekend reporter Jiang Minyu