On October, 21 2009 the conference «Earn, do not loss!» was held in Moscow, within the bounds of which leading participants of retail property market discussed components of success in shopping centers.

Stephen Pragnell, Dirk Wichner, Andrey Sukhov, Allard Thiadens and Roman Skorokhodov appeared as speakers. The host of the conference — Oleg Voytsekhovsky, the Managing Director of the Russian Council of Shopping Centers.

Stephen Pragnell, the Head of the MEGA shopping centers in Russia, informed the audience about a present structure of IKEA MEGA project, general principles underlying a successful concept. Mr. Pragnell demonstrated that most problems appeared for lack of clear understanding what was a shopping center in fact, what general principles should be fulfilled certainly in order to attract customers and make them loyal buyers.

Dirk Wichner, the Head of management department of JONES LANG LASALLE shopping centers, gave an insight into principles of budgeting and spending of shopping center marketing budget, on telling examples he demonstrated typical mistakes in promotion strategies and mechanisms, attracted the audience attention on how to use effective communication skills with lessees and customers.

Andrey Sukhov, the First deputy of the General director at The Okhotny Ryad shopping center, presented the Management Company work plan, according to which there is not only no need to make investments on the part of estate owner, but there is also a possibility to save on basic cost items, cover the expenses and receive additional earnings.

Allard Thiadens, the Head of statistics department in IKEA company, discussed the ways of rising attraction for shopping center chains, where the standardization is especially important as well as control over expenses. The basic elements of realistic budget planning are arrangement of specific index rate for all expense groups, control over dynamics of lease income acquisition from sales areas in market zones.

Mattias Andreassen, the Head of Property department in IKEA company, descanted on a rather new topic — complex stabilization of commercial real property. The use of this scheme, which being regularly improved and adjusted, allows providing stability in business even under really variable conditions.

Roman Skorokhodov, the General Director of the Company «WATCOM», disclosed the mechanisms that ensure objective estimation of attendance and sales of shopping center lessees. A specially developed index (anybody can join it) helps to estimate attendance. Index of consumer activity represents a trend of attendance for the whole market — so it gives a possibility to see not a certain number of visitors for a given period of time, but attendance dynamics.

The online conference «Earn, do not loss» was organized as a business program of the area fair «Commercial lease 2009» — where owners of shopping centers from Moscow, Kazan, Samara, Ufa, Yekaterinburg, Voronezh, Belgorod, Vladimir and other cities demonstrated 60 commercial real properties to potential lessees.

According to materials of «Property Facility Management», № 5, December 2009 — January 2010.