Spotsylvania Town Center is hosting its first-ever, “Small Shop Showdown.”
To encourage creativity and entrepreneurialism, the competition invites new or existing small businesses to submit their ideas for a chance to win a free six-month lease for retail space inside the mall. Applicants can enter the competition through January 20 and the winner will be announced February 3.
Katlin Mckinney, Marketing Director for Spotsylvania Towne Center, says this is not the first time the company has executed this idea. McKinney said the Small Shop Showdown was piloted at one of their malls in Ohio. She said the winner of that competition was a 3-D printing company.
“The way forward in retail is creativity and not doing the same thing over and over again,” says McKinney, “You have to think out of the box.”
The competition comes as a series of stores at the mall have closed, to include Sears Charming Charlie, and Regis hair salon has all closed recently. Last year, we took a brief tour around the mall and counted the number of shuttered storefronts.
Despite this, McKinney says the mall has felt little effect from the ‘retailpocolypse’ that is occurring across the country, where stores like Toys ‘R Us, Bed Bath and Beyond, and just this past week Macy’s have all garnered headlines for closing locations (the Macy’s at Spotsylvania Town Center or any Macy’s in Virginia was not on the most recent list of announced store closings).
“We consistently try to be a community center and not just a shopping mall,” McKinney said, “We create things the community can be involved in.”
Mckinney said she is most excited to see all of the ideas coming in from all of the entrepreneurs. She said after the deadline, they will evaluate all of the ideas and meet with applicants to discuss before finally announcing the winner on February 3rd.
Mckinney’s advice to other retailers that are looking to create more opportunities is, “look outside the box and invest in your community.”
‘A lot of new business owners are afraid of rent’
Joe Bell, Director of Corporate Communications for Cafaro Company, who manages the Spotsylvania Towne Center, says there’s a misconception on why so many retail operations are failing today.
“There is a lot of churning in the retail industry, primarily among the national chains,” Bell says, “When you look at retail numbers, the online numbers are closer to 10%. While online has an impact, the biggest reason for problems among retailers has a lot more to do with debt load.”
Bell said the motivation for the Small Shop Showdown was finding new ways to introduce new tenants to the space.
“A lot of new business owners are afraid of rent,” Bell says, “We are introducing an opportunity where they don’t have to worry about that while they grow and become established. It’s a new avenue to occupy the shopping center and get new leads for our leasing staff.”
Bell said they found a good two dozen businesses in their pilot program in Ohio, where the ideas were so good, the leasing staff kept talking to them to develop creative solutions to keep working together.
“We want people to be imaginative,” says Bell, “They should not be afraid. There should always be a way to make it happen and we want to help them do it.”
