Westfield reports lacklustre fashion sales at flagship malls in Q1

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
May 11, 2017

Global shopping centre landlord Westfield said that fashion stores at its flagship malls experienced a 2% decrease in sales over the first quarter of the year, and a 7.6% slump at its regional centres.

The company, owner of shopping centres such as the Westfield World Trade Centre in New York City and Westfield London, published on Wednesday a first quarter trading update, revealing a mix picture for categories across its sites.

On a year-on-year basis, the fashion category performed slightly better with a 1.2% increase, but fashion sales still slumped 2.4% at regional malls. The performance was clearly weaker compared with specialty stores sales, which grew 3.3% at flagship stores and 0.3% at regional malls.

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Jewellery was a strong category with a 2.4% increase in sales at Westfield’s flagship sites and a 5.3% at regional centres. And leisure spending was the fastest growing component of specialty spending at flagship centres, up 6.9% over the 12 month period. Meanwhile, general retail stores reported a 2.1% decrease at flagship stores and 2.2% increase regionally.

Westfield is currently developing projects at World Trade Centre in New York, Century City in Los Angeles, Westfield London, UCT in San Diego and Valley Fair in San Jose. Additionally, it is undertaking pre-development work in future retail projects in cities like Milan, Croydon and Topanga.

The company has currently 17 flagship centres, 18 shopping malls and more than 6,435 retail outlets.