Outlet malls can be a fun way to spend the day with family or shopping with friends. " xlink:href="# flipboard "> Share on Flip it Follow him at /TomWebbMN.Share on X (Twitter) Share on Facebook Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn “But it also changes the frequency with which people will come to Twin Cities Outlets … It won’t be a day trip. “I think probably a little bit it does,” Morris, the Simon spokesman, said. Will the Eagan mall’s location change how people shop at outlets, as the day trip becomes the drop-in? The Indianapolis-based company also owns Southdale Center and Maplewood Mall, as well as Albertville Premium Outlets. If the nearby outlet center does affect sales at traditional malls here, Simon will know it. The Eagan mall is a joint venture between Paragon Outlet Partners, which owns 65 percent of the development, and Simon, which owns 35 percent and will operate the mall. So you wouldn’t have the same goods in an outlet store at the same time you had them at full price at a retail store.” Humphers also notes there is “the emergence of better technology, which gave (brands) an ability to see what products you had where. “It still has the label, but it may have fewer buttons, simpler construction, maybe slightly lower-quality fabric - anything they can do to save money on it,” McComb said. Instead of relying on sheer distance to serve as a moat between full-priced stores and outlet centers, luxury retailers now use other techniques - such as manufacturing separate and less-expensive lines, sold only at outlet centers. “We’ve got two or three spaces left, but we’re almost sold out in terms of available space.” “The lease-up here has been fantastic,” said Les Morris, a spokesman for mall operator Simon, one of the Eagan mall’s two owners. Now 22 years later, owners of the 409,000-square-foot new Eagan mall report that upscale clothing manufacturers were eager to sign leases. They could get the hard-goods guys, the pots and pans, those types of tenants.” “The outlet mall that was built in Woodbury suffered because they could not attract the fashion tenants,” McComb said. The decline of that Woodbury outlet served as a warning about being near traditional malls. There’s also the remnants of Manufacturers Marketplace in Woodbury, a 1992-vintage outlet mall that struggled and was later redeveloped to include a Walmart Supercenter. And there’s Albertville Premium Outlets, northwest up I-94. There’s Medford Outlet Center, located to the south on I-35. There’s North Branch Outlets, located north of the Twin Cities on I-35. They were expanding their consumer footprint.” IT’S THE LABELĬurrently, the Twin Cities area boasts three major outlet malls, each roughly an hour’s drive from downtown St. “And they realized that they weren’t selling to the same customer as their mainline business. “The brands discovered they could make a lot of money selling at outlets,” McComb said. Even the department store Saks Fifth Avenue is getting in on the action, opening a Saks Off 5th store at the Eagan outlet. Crew, Coach, Michael Kors, Vera Bradley, 7 For All Mankind, Polo Ralph Lauren and other higher-end brands. That’s evident in headliners coming to Eagan: Armani, Ann Taylor, J. “It’s called retail sensitivity, and it basically was that the manufacturers did not want to interfere with their (full-priced) accounts, because those accounts were much more important to the brand than opening an outlet store.”īut over the years, that concern has faded and a new business model has taken root. “It’s still an issue,” said Humphers, with Value Retail News. They feared selling goods at an outlet store would undercut full-priced sales - and dent their reputation. So that gave the outlet mall developers the opportunity to move closer in on good locations.”īut department stores weren’t the only ones wary. “Then the department store industry changed. “In every major metro area, there were department stores of a similar type,” McComb added. I know Ralph Lauren was sensitive to that. “If somebody (with an outlet store) tried to come close to them, they would reflect their displeasure by reducing their sales of their merchandise line within their stores. “When we had Dayton Hudson … they were really defensive about their department-store territories,” said Jim McComb, a Twin Cities retail analyst.
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