"Plan - wait a storm and restart"

After February 24, many foreign clothing stores closed in St. Petersburg shopping centers, and foreign film companies canceled the premieres of films in Russian cinemas. How do shopping centers continue to work and what do they do with empty areas?

“Paper” talked about this with Maxim Levchenko, managing the Fort Group partner, which includes such Petersburg shopping centers as Europolis, City Mall, Rodeo Drive and others.

Maxim Levchenko

Fort Group Managing Partner

- What is the situation in the shopping centers of St. Petersburg, how many areas are not busy after the departure of Western brands?

- The shopping center is working. In addition to those who closed, there are a lot of foreign brands - Italian, French - open, they continue to work with the whole assortment. We just wait until large stores open, such as Zara, H&M, Uniqlo, IKEA. They will open. The Polish company LPP has already opened Reserved, Mohito, Cropp (stores opened under other names: Reserved are called Re, CROPP - CR, and House - XC - approx. "Papers" ). A positive trend has been outlined.

- So you think that large brands will return?

“I'm sure they will return.” They simply open again at some point when it will be possible. They are well done in this regard, do not engage in politics, but simply look for options to rebuild logistics chains and financial.

The most important thing is that they retain teams and shops. As soon as the opportunity appears, a slightly intensity of the situation related to Ukraine will subside-but it seems to me that he is already slowly falling-it will be possible to work normally.

- Do you think they will return under their own names?

- Of course, I think that under my own.

- Not like Reserved and Cropp?

- Yes. LPP, perhaps, did it temporarily. It is not clear to me why to change the names. Maybe because of PR questions or something else. There will be the same assortment.

- Closed stores continue to pay the rental fee of shopping center?

-In different ways, but basically continue, yes. They continue to bear the costs of the team, to maintain stores, save wages. This is a signal that they want to work, want to stay and do not want to lose a large Russian market.

- That is, now the situation with the shopping center cannot be compared with what was in the covid time?

- No. In the small shopping centers, where there are no all these brands at all, nothing has changed at all. And companies such as McDonald's do not affect their work. There are something to replace them in the moment.

-And what is the situation on the food courts? It seems that they were least affected.

- In general, the restaurant business is localized, so everything is not so scary. Food-likes work as usual.

Yes, and McDonald's will open again in June ( on May 26 it became known that in the former McDonald 's restaurants in Moscow, similar cafes with new names will open in June, prices may increase - approx. Papers ) . They are already preparing for the opening. Everything is saved there, all people are in the field. Starbax will not be, but, it seems to me, in Moscow, St. Petersburg and the country as a whole, there are enough coffee houses to replace it.

- Cinemas are slowly closing. How many of them will remain?

- Cinemas are still working. There are small turns, but not all still closed. But in general, cinemas were badly injured. They have fallen attendance and popularity due to streaming platforms. People really began to go to the cinema less, and there were few releases lately.

I propose simply to make a decision at the legislative level: if some company does not give permission for the premiere, you can decriminalize the article so that the show is allowed and there was no responsibility for this. It seems to me that the authorities work in this direction. There is no direct negativity in this regard. So that there is no direct piracy or theft, you need to make cinemas temporarily transfer money for rental for deposits, and then the owners of rights will be able to pick up this money when they decide to return to work.

- What to do with huge rooms for cinemas that closed?

-We have already changed something: fitness centers did, household shops. Holy place is not empty. It will be possible to replace. The number of halls is likely to be smart.

But again, you can always wait. As in Chinese philosophy: you sit on the river bank and wait. Now you have to do not twitch, do not fuss. All investments have already been made: shopping centers have been built, cinemas are built, equipment was purchased. Moreover, now everything understands everything and negotiate with each other. We are moving towards the networks, the networks are coming towards us. Everyone survives: they learned to interact in the pandemic, there is no aggression against each other.

Most Western companies believe in Russia, believe that we will survive this shock. Everyone wants to work and conduct business. Everyone has peaceful goals.

- The fact that the West believes in Russia, do you understand by communicating with foreign partners?

- Certainly. Everyone believes in the market. They already invested huge capital here, won the trust of consumers here, people are waiting for them and they themselves do not want to go anywhere.

Here it is worth sharing two things: politics and business. It is clear that everyone depends on each other, but, in general, the statements can be alone, but in fact a completely different one happens.

Entrepreneurs do not want to lose anything. They want to continue the business and now suffer big losses to preserve it. I think that the intensity of passions will subside, and somewhere in September everything should return to the normal direction. Of course, the world has changed, but so.

- That is, closing or reformatting of the shopping center in St. Petersburg should not wait?

- No one has such plans. Formatting, reducer, reconstruction always occur, but now it’s too early to talk about something like that. Now the plan is to wait out the storm, wait until everything is tired, and restart.

- In early March, you proposed organizing a meeting of business and authorities and discussing the departure of foreign companies. Did you manage to talk to one of the officials?

- Yes, I managed to meet. We held a conference in Smolny with Boris Piotrovsky and Alexei Korubelnikov (vice-governors of St. Petersburg-approx. Papers ) . The city in this case can do little.

The authorities of St. Petersburg do not affect the course of sanctions issues, they cannot affect this at the local level. This is the decision of the brands that they temporarily do not work, not local authorities. In any case, the authorities do not increase taxes, now all the covid restrictions have been canceled (the mandatory mask regime in St. Petersburg has been canceled from May 27 - approx. “Papers” ). So the question is more likely in our agreements [with Western companies]. This is a pure business today. And geopolitics, what to discuss it? She is what she is.

Photo on the cover: Andrey Bok for "Paper"

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• CROPP is now CR, and Reserved is Re. What do Petersburg clothing stores look like after the "sanctions" rebranding.
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