Eleven things to consider when planning to open a store in a post-COVID world

With lockdown restrictions slowly lifting throughout the world , people are starting to emerge from their homes and life is taking its first tentative steps towards normalising. In this article we will be speaking through some of the steps that retailers should consider when planning to open a store in a post-Covid world.

While there’s a lot of debate about what the ‘new normal’ will look like for retail post-covid, what’s clear is that retailers looking to open their doors in the short term will have to take steps to ensure their staff and customers are safe.

Government legislation varies from state to state but no matter what the law requires a store to do, there’s a more important barometer you need to consider. Yes , of course you need to make sure that what you are doing is within the legal guidelines, but what your customers expect is the higher benchmark to consider.

When you consider that this way, it’s not a necessity to wait for governments to tell us what to do. We can anticipate what customers are going to expect and this is the benchmark that matters, not what we need to be doing as a legal minimum. Physical stores that plan to reopen must persuade their customers to be safe while shopping in their stores.

What your clients need to feel comfortable and relaxed is inevitably going to be a higher standard than any government policy. It’s not about what we need to do in order to operate as retailers but rather ‘what can we do to make people feel comfortable? ’.

In this article we highlight 11 areas that should be considered when reopening an existing store, opening a new one or embarking on a short-term retail project. There is no one-size-fits-all reopening approach, as this is far from being an exhaustive list. Consider your business goals and resources as you plan (and how reopening those will impact).

  1. Regular cleaning 

Repeated cleaning of all areas of your store is a must. It is considered almost as important as cleaning actually is to clean it and make sure customers know that you have a strict schedule of cleaning in place.

You’ll need to focus on different areas, depending on your industry and the layout of your store. Implementing a cleaning regime targets that have frequently touched surfaces and spaces like shopping carts, pin pads and door handles. Don’t forget to cater for staff equipment; like selling machines, shared tools like pricing guns and fridges.

covid 19 safety

  1. New Safety Devices

Installing safety equipment may seem like a costly investment but it will serve to strengthen customer trust in your policies and approach. Customers are not allowed to enter if they do not see clear effort and expense being spent on their safety. Make sure that the safety equipment is well maintained and clear and obvious, it shouldn’t be something you ‘re embarrassed about or try to hide from.

First of all, consider installing plastic screens at checkouts and possibly placing a hand sanitizer station near the door.

  1. PPE

No matter where your store is located, you’ll need to consider PPE. Even if where you are in the world is not mandatory is it something that will reassure your customers? Probably the answer is Yes. Make sure that you have a reliable PPE source for all staff, and that they are fully trained in how and when to wear it. You will also need to ensure that your PPE cleanup approach is consistent.

Depending on where you are, it might be wise to make it compulsory for all customers to wear some PPE level for entry.

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  1. Social  Distancing

It’s probably a social distance that will be standard practise for a while yet and possibly longer. At the very least, people’s awareness of their own personal space is heightened and will be integral to doing what you can to make people feel comfortable.

Make it store policy to keep a distance of two metres between everyone (including staff) and place markers on the floor in areas that are likely to experience a queue like checkout.

Other choices. That depends heavily on the specific configuration of your store, including the implementation of one-way and clearly signed ‘flows’ that encourage customers to walk around the store in a specific way, thus minimising the chances of meeting someone else coming the other way. If you have two doors, then another option is to have separate entrances and exits.

If your store is relatively small then creating a capacity limit may be sensible. Sign clear how many people are allowed in the store and make sure that a staff member is at the door to enforce the policy. If you expect to have large numbers of people outside the queuing make sure that you also consider their safety and place markers where they can queue outside while keeping social distance.

kiosk in malls

  1. Your staff

Never forget about your employees throughout the process of opening your store. Your safety should be as important to you as your customers’, if not more important. Likewise, their adherence to your new policies will be an enormous contributor to whether they are successful and whether customers feel comfortable enough to enter, buy and tell their friends. To this end, make sure that you train your employees well and they understand the role they need to play.

In terms of shifts, try and balance shifts so that not too many people are on breaks at the same time to avoid crowding in the ‘break’ areas.

  1. Signage 

You should look at clearly signing the steps that you have taken and explaining your policies clearly. Make them reassuring and highly visible, so that customers know that their safety is being taken seriously. Clear messages reiterating social distance requirements, client volumes or some of your security processes will provide a reassuring and consistent environment. In-store announcements could even be used to remind customers of proper traffic flow and social distancing protocols.

  1. Returns

In a post-Covid world you need to think about how to manage your returns. At first, considering extending your standard returns policy until well after the lockdown ends may be sensible.

Is it enough to wash them when they return, and will customers purchase potentially contaminated clothes? These are things you need to consider – make sure you have your policies clearly signed to reassure customers.

Related post: Will physical retail have a role to play in a Post-COVID world?

  1. Opening hours

Do not automatically resume the same trading hours when reopening. You might want to extend it, or even shorten it. Keep in mind that social distancing requirements and cleaning processes will mean that opening and shutting your store take longer.

To support social distancing efforts by limiting store traffic, adjust store hours of operation where necessary. Consider offering exclusive early hours access to seniors and other high-risk individuals and maybe boosting pickup hours to serve more online customers.

  1. Changing rooms

Changing rooms are a staple and required part of the sales process for fashion and apparel brands but they represent some major challenges in the immediate future. Keeping changing rooms closed may be sensible, unless you can limit numbers and have a robust cleaning or decontamination process in place.

If you decide to open your changing rooms, position a nearby staff member to maintain social distance and clear items that have been handled immediately.

  1. Just contactless?

Dealing with money presents challenges. Just accepting card payments and maximising how much you use contactlessly would be sensible. If contactless is not possible (some countries have extended the limit for the duration of the crisis) then ensure that you disinfect the pin pad before and after each transaction – and make sure that the customer sees that you are doing so.

 11. Shopping by appointment  

Finally, one trend that we’re seeing more and more is a switch to appointment shopping. This is where customers book a time slot where they will be able to enter the store. They are the only person in that store during this time, and have the full (socially distant) staff attention. This is obviously not an option for all retailers but is an extremely valid option for high-end goods or brands of fashion and apparel.

Consumer confidence will return when they are confident their safety is a priority.

Book Temporary spaces on rent on Myrsa

Will physical retail have a role to play in a Post-COVID world?

The ongoing Covid-19 crisis has profoundly impacted many facets of our lives. The way we shop is no exception. Yet what does the pandemic ‘s effect on physical retail futures mean?

With local laws curtailing our movements at the height of the crisis (and trapping us in our homes in many countries), the way we shopped changed drastically. Restricted high streets and malls, and ecommerce underwent tremendous upliftment. Now that the freeze is easing across the globe, the question arises – does physical retail still have a part to play, and if so, what’s going to be different?

The short answer to that is yes. Physical retail should continue to play an significant part in the relationship between customers and brands. Its dynamics may change slightly, but our high streets do not go anywhere and brands will continue to look at physical retail as a mighty opportunity. What’s important to think is which customer preferences in a post-Covid environment will survive, and which will revert.

We’ll take a look at what’s changed in this article, what it means for physical retail and how brands can adapt.

What’s changed?

It’s no secret that ecommerce has seen a big boom in the last few months. As McKinsey’s consulting group points out, retail will definitely see a gradual rise in online shopping and in areas that had been predominantly store-based in the past. That would be attributed in part to consumers who previously preferred shopping offline, such as baby boomers and Gen Z, being more comfortable with shopping online. Particularly for the supermarket ‘routine’ such as groceries. If they have done it once or twice it is going to become normal.

retail space for rent

According to Forbes, these new consumer habits are likely to persist with an anticipated 20 per cent annual growth in ecommerce across retail as a whole, compared with 15 per cent pre-Covid

In fact this shouldn’t be a big surprise. That was a phenomenon that we’ve seen already. The last few months may have actually accelerated the trend but there is still a vital part to play in physical retail. This is because while ecommerce may have benefited from being

Nonetheless. Although ecommerce success in recent months may have benefited from being a fast and convenient alternative, it can not compete with in-store experience.

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What’s the physical retail getting to the party?
Ecommerce is amazing. What doesn’t want the convenience of their own home to do all their dull ‘routine’ shopping? It’s smoother, quicker and sometimes cheaper. Yet we need to note before we get carried away that this is not a one-size-fits-all case.

Everything this comes down to the experience these days. Name the industry and you’ll find that expertise is at some stage the main differentiator. This is no different in trade. Improvements in ecommerce capability are generally geared towards increasing efficiency and reducing friction. That effectiveness comes at the expense of experience and the key is experience.

Physical stores offer the opportunity to provide interactions that just can not compete with the digital world. There is no alternative. For precisely this reason, digital brands have launched physical stores all over the world over the last few years.

What’s more, it’s obvious that even in the last few months there’s been a big shift to digital, there’s still a need for an experience above and above what a typical ecommerce website offers. For example, here at Myrsa we saw a tenfold increase in inquiries about our Virtual Reality Stores as customers look for ways to differentiate and deliver unique, branded experiences.

kiosk in mall

That is why we are confident physical retail will recover as consumer demand picks up. People are going to return to the high street, back to physical retailing. Yet while we’re sure that physical retail space for rent will return as a retail force, we ‘re also positive it won’t look exactly the same.

What will become of physical retail in a post-covid world?
We need to think about what it will look like in the short term and what it will look like in the long term to answer this issue. The perspective of the short term is interesting; with the shops opening gradually across the globe, we are still catching glimpses of what is to come. We will go through this in more depth in a separate article but it is fair to conclude that physical retail will concentrate on fulfilling consumer standards about hygiene and health over the next few months. Consider PPE, hand sanitiser, and shopping for appointments.

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The long-term view is even more compelling. When brands use physical to attract new consumers and offer excellent brand experiences, we ‘re likely to see even more of a shift to experiential retail. They need to work on the halo effect to do this – using both the physical and the digital to deliver a seamless customer experience.

In a recent interview, José Neves, founder and CEO of Farfetch’s online luxury shopping platform, took this even further when he said: “Brick-and-mortar digitization was ‘good to have’ in the eyes of many brands and retailers but should be pushed to a ‘must have’”

The Covid-19 crisis has increased transition pace, and the need for reform. Brands capable of integrating online and offline to gain advantages on both sides would be competitive with physical retail (so-called ‘phygital’).

Yet not all digital upgrades. Changed the role of physical retailing. Or rather, it has accelerated the change that it was already experiencing. Stores will focus less on shifting stock and generating revenue, and more on building customer loyalty, gathering insight into marketing and reaching new audiences. More marketing … Less transactional.

This is a phenomenon we’ve seen in the emergence of pop-ups as brand trial sites, run product releases and gain marketing feedback in short-term environments designed to offer outstanding experiences.

We expect that we’ll see less but better flagship stores over the next few years coupled with plenty of flexible retail (like pop-ups shop on rent) to highlight brands and goods, draw new buyers, create brand loyalty and improve online sales. We ‘re going to see versatile retailing in affluent areas where you’d never have seen it before.

Such physical stores can offer less items and sell less, but can have even more entertainment.

Entertainment and the experience is everything.

How much is rent in a mall in Mumbai?

Looking to create a fun shopping or pop-up experience? It can be a challenging challenge to find the right room with so many unknown variables — and one of the first important questions that will arise is, “How much does it cost to rent a store in the mall? “You know that temporary shopping interactions are all about finding the right location for consumers to get involved with their product or service. Many malls, however, make you go through hoops to find out the prices for the best stores open.

We also gathered details about what rental spaces are to be sold at the mall, as well as an estimation of what it costs to rent one. We’ll also be offering several alternatives to mall rooms, including chic cafes, vibrant art galleries, and more.

Why do the people in the mall rent out stores?

While shopping centres aren’t as popular as they once were, shopping centres are still a place for shoppers to visit their favourite stores and find new ones. There are several reasons why anyone in the mall would like to rent a store — whether it’s opening a boutique, offering facilities or entertaining.

Another growing area for malls and other rental spaces is the pop-up shops and shopping experiences. Companies are trying to develop exclusive products that aren’t like a typical brick and mortar shop. These short-term events will provide brands of all sizes and budgets with an opportunity to move into a physical market in a city or region that they have not yet had a presence in.

Related Post: 8 Tips To Grow Your Seasonal Retail Business

The temporary shops can generate exciting buzz on social media and draw new clients to your company. Besides mall rooms, to give your pop-up a different flair, you can also try other exclusive rental rooms like cafes, art galleries or trendy shop fronts. Later in the article, we’ll have some fun tips to give you an idea of what’s out there beyond space in a store.

kiosk in mall

How much does it cost to rent a store in the mall?

Retail real estate now in Mumbai is the most expensive, followed by New Delhi and then Bangalore. Rent is calculated on the basis of the floor the store is situated on. The ground floor demands a premium as a rule of thumb and is typically the most expensive. This is only leased to established retailers on the regional and national level. The first-floor rent is about 20-25 per cent lower than the ground and the second floor is about 30% lower than the first floor.
You can expect an average mall rent (averaged over all floors) per SQFT per month to be around Rs. 170 (+ /- 10 per cent) for all Mumbai properties.

Many other malls do not disclose their pricing and only have square footage and other famous businesses in the surrounding area. Bear in mind that many malls will charge higher rents for being close to famous department stores or retail outlets such as Apple. Of course, you want the maximum amount of foot traffic, but in a shopping environment, it certainly would cost you.

Related Post: What is Location-Based Marketing?

How to rent a store in the mall 

It can be super challenging to find a retail spot for your pop-up — do you ever wish there was a place in your town that listed every option? Okay, luckily there is something exactly like that already! Rather than renting from a big mall, go local and rent from one of Myrsa’s many hosts — find Temporary rental spaces near you

Myrsa has so many shops, restaurants and stores available for rent in dozens of cities across the country. Plus, rates and services are upfront and you don’t have to go with various sales representatives from phone call after a phone call.

mall space for rent

Additionally, Myrsa will help you narrow down what you’re searching for with search filters for location and amenity. Check at the photo collection, see what kind of equipment is included in the rent and get in direct touch with the property’s host.

Other factors to consider

Although cost is a major factor in choosing a property, you should also consider what kind of crowd you get at a mall vs. other retail locations. A shop close to famous bars, restaurants and things to do might be easier on your target market than in a dusty shopping mall.

Finding the response “How much is it costing to rent a store in the mall? “Can be time-consuming and wearisome. We hope we’ve helped you understand the cost of renting a store at the mall with some options that may better suit your needs.

 

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