Loving Outlet Shopping - Value Retail News

GlOBal PEOPlE
Former halogen
Exec forms new
P.R. agency
Dan innes, co-founder and former
board director at public relations
firm Halogen, has launched Innesco,
a property PR and marketing business.
London-based Innesco continues
to work with Henderson
Global Investors’ European Outlet
Mall Fund, liaising closely with the
McArthurGlen team across the nineoutlet
portfolio.
Other property clients include
Ivanhoe Cambridge, Paul Whight’s
Cadena, The Wellcome Trust, Insite
Asset Management and MGPA.
With more than 15-years experience,
Innes has acted for numerous
property clients including ING Real
Estate, Land Securities, Stanhope
and British Land. He is chairman
of the British Council of Shopping
Centres’ New Generation Committee
and an active member of the ICSC.
Joining Innes in the new company
are Christina Sandkühler as senior
account manager and Ben Cooper as
account manager. Sandkühler has
six years marketing and PR experience
and will work on accounts
including Henderson, Ivanhoe
Cambridge’s St. Enoch shopping
center in Glasgow, and Cadena’s
new Retail Estate Fund. Cooper is a
former Retail Week journalist who
will handle retail-sector accounts.
McArthurGlen makes
two key appointments
McArthurGlen Europe has appointed
Eric Decouvelaere as managing
director, Southern Europe, and
Geoff Nidd as country manager in
France and Belgium.
Decouvelaere was previously
regional director of Northern Europe
for McArthurGlen. In his new position,
he oversees the company’s
four designer outlet villages in Italy,
including Serravalle Designer Outlet,
as well as two outlet villages in France
(Troyes Designer Outlet and Roubaix
Designer Outlet) and one in Belgium,
10 InternatIOnal Outlet JOurnal Fall 2009
UK outlet veteran
john drummond dies
By LiNDA hUMPhERS
Editor in Chief
The British outlet industry lost one
of its pioneers and true characters
in July. As director of the Guinea
Group, John Drummond was an unflagging
supporter of factory
outlet retailing and the driving
force behind Junction One,
the 200,000-sf outlet center
he opened in 2004 in Antrim,
Northern Ireland.
Mr. Drummond founded
The Guinea Group in 1983
with his friend and business
partner John Jones, who became
the firm’s financial director.
The company specialized
in retail development throughout the UK,
initially concentrating on prime highstreet
locations in small towns such as
Inverness, Dumfries, Penzance and High
Wycombe, becoming especially fond of
listed buildings.
Shopping centers in medium-sized
towns followed, and by 1993 the Group
had focused on factory outlet and offprice
formats, both in new build and
redevelopments. The group became asset
managers and joint owners of Clacton
Factory Shopping Village in Clacton-on-
Sea, The Galleries in Aldershot, Callendar
Square in Falkirk, and Junction One.
Mr. Drummond was in the middle of
redeveloping the former K Village in
Cumbria, England, when he died July 13.
Through his vision, the 24,000-sf outlet
center that opened in 1995 was being
transformed into the €113 million Riverside
Place, a mixed-use development set
to open in October 2010. That project,
which friends say was Mr. Drummond’s
baby, has been absorbed by CUSP, which
was Guinea Group’s financial partner on
Factory Shopping Messancy.
Decouvelaere will also oversee the
leasing and management of two new
designer outlet schemes: the 20,000m
2 first phase in Naples and the
21,000-m 2 phase one in Athens. Both
projects are set to open in 2010.
Decouvelaere joined McArthurGlen
John Drummond
Junction One and Riverside.
Mr. Drummond was one of life’s
characters, a dynamo, an entrepreneur, a
deal maker who once lived in Hong Kong.
According to friends, he had suffered from
heart trouble for many years, but typically,
he held a leasing meeting for Riverside
Place during his last stay in the hospital.
At his funeral in Edinburgh,
Mr. Drummond was
remembered by John Jones
for borrowing his new car one
afternoon and returning a few
hours later, “bounding into my
office with a big grin and that
hearty laugh and pronouncing,
‘the good news is I’m OK.’”
Not surprisingly, the Guinea
name derived from a West End
bar & grill that became a second
office on many evenings. Mr. Drummond’s
passions were retail, property, cars,
Harley-Davidsons and shooting. Mr. Jones
said he gradually noticed a pattern to the
Scottish locations the company was developing
– Dumfries, Stranraer, Kirkcaldy and
Falkirk – all well-known for their plentiful
supply of wild fowl and pheasants.
“John loved shopping center developments
and he always believed the
Americans were the leaders,” Mr. Jones
said. “So he got as many of the team as
possible over to the States for study tours
so we could all learn together. He always
had a great team ethic and that is still in
existence today. He truly believed quality
would see the test of time and his attention
to detail was second to none.”
In choosing music to play while the
mourners left the funeral, Mr. Jones
said he and Mr. Drummond’s companion
Marion selected “the one that John
would have wanted and summed him up
perfectly.”
The song was “Bat Out of Hell,” sung
by Meat Loaf. c
in August 2005 as retail director, overseeing
the company’s retail strategy
and retail operations. Prior to joining
McArthurGlen, Decouvelaere had positions
with Harrods and Printemps.
Nidd retains his current role as
General Manager for Troyes Designer
Outlet and Roubaix Designer Outlet. c