At the beginning of March, despite the herald of Retail’s impending boom, Touchwood Solihull, an upscale West Midlands shopping centre, was seemingly bucking the trend. Key metrics of footfall, sales and vacancy rates were all moving in the right direction. Less than 5% of our units were empty and we had firm interest on every vacant unit.
The strategy to attract more independent businesses and deliver a point of difference beyond the cookie cutter, identikit
shopping centre experience was working. Like many other businesses across a variety of sectors, there was an optimism and confidence, we had started the year so well and felt that ‘2020 was going to be our year’.
Nobody could have predicted quite what would happen in the Spring of 2020.
Fast forward ten weeks and the shackles of lockdown are being steadily broken down, non-essential retail began to re-emerge, more shops opened with each passing week and as it now stands 95% of our stores have reopened.
Footfall is understandably ...
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