Since opening for business on December 18 last year the City Mall has become both a popular haunt for urban dwellers as well as a favoured venue for shoppers. The country’s first modern shopping mall houses branches of established businesses as well as new business ventures trading in a range of consumer goods from fashion clothing to fast foods. All are reporting that the City Mall is a ground-breaking development in the urban commercial culture and that its appealing environment renders it popular with both shoppers and sightseers. The City Mall, it seems, has “caught on.”
When Stabroek Business visited the City Mall earlier this week it was crowded with the customary throngs of visitors including workers and schoolchildren seeking a mid-day meal. Yellow-shirted volunteers attached to the Cricket World Cup’s Local Organizing Committee were escorting a handful of visitors around the facility. A creole food snackette appeared to have caught their attention.
Kings Gold ‘N Gifts is a subsidiary of Kings Jewellery World that opened for business at the City Mall in December last year. When Stabroek Business stopped at the store shop attendants were busy showing off a wide range of Cricket World Cup gold jewellery – cricket bands and small gold figures – batsmen, bowlers, fielders, balls and stumps – which they anticipated would ‘sell well’ over the next few weeks. Nafeeza Faerber, the store’s manager and a King’s employee for two years says that trading in the Mall makes a marked difference. “The City Mall is an attractive place to do business and it has made a distinct difference to our own trading,” she told Stabroek Business. Nafeeza says that some visitors to Guyana for Cricket World Cup had already found their way to the Mall and that given Kings’ reputation for cricket bands she expected that the new establishment’s line of gold souvenirs would prove popular with visitors.
Ullanda Wiltshire, a Shop Attendant at Hair Frenzy, another occupant of the City Mall, is also singing the praises of the new shopping facility. Ullanda says that since Hair Frenzy has a second branch it is possible to make actual comparisons. “For us the City Mall has been an excellent place for trading. The facility itself is attractive and apart from people who come here to do their shopping a number of people actually come just to see the place. What that means is that people are always visiting our shop and once they get here we see their presence as a sales opportunity.”
The City Mall has become a popular trading location for beauty and gift shops and Rachael Singh of Angel’s Perfumery and Gift Centre also believes that the Mall has made a difference to urban retail trading. “It’s not very difficult to tell the difference. This would have to be one of the best places for trading in the city at this time,” she says.
Tots and Teens is a ‘first time’ venture operating at the City Mall and Somatie Jack, the store’s proprietor says that it has been a ‘worthwhile venture.’ While conceding that, as is customary in business, there are ‘bad days’ at the Mall Somatie says that the general popularity of the facility affords businesses a distinct advantage over some high street stores. The small cluster of snackettes on the ground floor of the City Mall boasts the advantage of an attractive open dining area and the proximity of the escalators, a novelty in Guyana and a preoccupation with the children who frequent the location. Eleanor English, one of three sisters who run The Brown Bag Delhi says that a Shopping Mall is long overdue in Guyana. “It’s attractive, well-organized and well-managed. We do good business here,” she says.
Visitors to the City Mall told Stabroek Business that the biggest challenge for the management of the facility lay in ensuring that the facility and the environment remained free of layabouts, vagrants and drug addicts. “If there is anything that will erode the popularity of this place is the feeling on the part of visitors that it has become a haunt for undesirables,” a visitor to the Mall told Stabroek Business.
