Loving Outlet Shopping - Value Retail News

McaRTHURGlEN
Outlet villages become
family event centres
McArthurGlen uses
culture and education
to attract families
and drive footfall
The 5th Annual Serravalle Outlet
Jazz Festival was held August 5-16 at
McArthurGlen’s Serravalle Designer
Outlet Village near Milan. Among the
21 acts performing under the stars was
Manhattan Transfer, which went on to
play at two other McArthurGlen Italian
centers: Veneto Designer Outlet Village
near Venice and Barberino Designer
Outlet Village near Florence. The music
at the new Veneto center’s Fashion & Live
Music Festival focused on R&B.
Shops and restaurants at all three outlet
villages stayed open until midnight during
the music festivals.
n n n
At McArthurGlen’s Castel Romano Designer
Outlet Village near Rome, Stan the
dinosaur showed up to do a little shopping.
Stan is a life-sized T-Rex dinosaur
replica created by the Black Hills Institute
of Geographical Research in the U.S. He
is 40 feet (13 metres) long and 12 feet (4
metres) high at the hips.
To celebrate Stan’s arrival, Castel
Romano held competitions to win a trip
to New York’s American Museum of
Natural History. The centre also offered
dinosaur-themed merchandising and
eating experiences, with everything from
T-Rex burgers to brontosaurus fillets.
The big T-Rex joins McArthurGlen’s
elephant at Castel Romano. The life-sized
elephant sculpture arrived last year by
road from the UK, stopping off along the
way at designer outlet villages in Swindon
and Ashford in the UK, Roermond
in The Netherlands and Troyes, France,
before crossing the Alps to Italy. Stan
visited Barberino and Serravalle Designer
Outlets, before arriving in Castel Romano.
Sales jumped by more than 10 percent at
each center when the elephant visited. c
22 InternatIOnal Outlet JOurnal Fall 2009
Serravalle Designer Village near Milan provide the perfect backdrop for an outdoor
music festival such as the jazz festival that McArthurGlen hosts every year at the center.
Collezioni opens 4th in Glasgow
McArthurGlen’s Collezioni,
a new concept in full-price
fashion for the travel retail
market, will open its fourth location at
Glasgow Airport later this year. Last
year’s launch of the first Collezioni,
at Venice Marco Polo Airport, re-invigorated
the presentation of prestige
fashion brands in an airport retail
setting. Since then the concept has
been expanded to Porto and Dublin
Airports, with a portfolio of brands
tailored to suit the specific needs of
each location. The concept grew out
of McArthurGlen’s relationship with
more than 750 brands through the
outlet distribution channel.
At Glasgow Airport, Collezioni will
unveil 11 new stores for directional
fashion brands eager to capture an
annual audience of more than 4 mil-
lion departing passengers. The units
are concentrated in a stylish, curved
avenue of stores in the departure
lounge, part of a £31 million revamp
of the terminal.
As the commercial heart of
Scotland, Glasgow has the UK’s
largest retail centre outside London
and hosts the country’s greatest
concentration of fashion retailing.
Glasgow’s notably vibrant fashion
market is driven by an enthusiastic
local audience of young early
adopters of fashion, supplemented
by strong tourist traffic. In particular,
Glasgow’s population has a high
proportion of young adults.
Glasgow Airport’s traffic is primarily
leisure, with key international destinations
being the Netherlands, Spain,
Ireland, Dubai, the US and Canada. c