How normal boys go to Mega: 7 stores per month

^{We are in Mega Khimki, a photo of one of our mystery shoppers on an independent check}

Hi!
They told me that Mega is impossible. Let's just say that our experience shows a bit of the opposite. And in order not to produce illusions, I’ll tell you a little more.

First, you must understand that Mega is a real Klondike. If you know and be able to. The reason is very simple - there are really a lot of people (not every shopping center can do that), they are all oriented to shopping and very solvent, plus a very correct and well-honed infrastructure, orders. Which, in fact, from the pros can become cons if you have not developed to the right level.

We have opened a store in Khimki since the spring, a year and a half a store has been operating in Nizhny Novgorod, there was a store in Mega Ufa. In December, we opened another 7 stores in Mega.

So Mega is a very expensive place. They are well aware of their price and set the appropriate rent. That is why opening the first, second or third store there simply does not make sense - if you do not know the rate of revenue from the flow with certain indicators, you yourself will burn, and at the same time create hemorrhoids to the lessor to change the “tenant”. And these difficulties in the optimal game, in general, no one needs. It is beneficial to stand for a long time for both the lessee and the lessor. Actually, it was in our first store in Mega - in Ufa, that rake turned out.

Only here we did not draw the conclusions “damn it, here I am not a foot”, but quite positive. I mean, they recounted the model, determined the boundaries where it becomes profitable, thought ... and went again, but this time a little later, when the experience was already enough.

Secondly, Mega is a place where every stupid sneeze is regulated by a noticeable fine.Opening a store in a large shopping center of this class is more difficult than on an ordinary street and more difficult than in a normal shopping center. At the entrance they give only a box with input, you need to coordinate all the projects very tightly. At the exit - you need to return everything back to the state of the same box, dismantling everything of your own (usually shopping centers are allowed to leave). Late to open - fine. Trash near the store is a fine. A seller in slippers is a fine. You move the goods on the shelves during the day - a fine. They brought an ikeev bag with goods - a fine. All this was done not to get money from the landlord, but to make it function normally. Minutes per minute opened, closed no earlier than the "last call", sellers did not chew gum, and so on. It is perhaps tougher only at airports - in some they can safely play for a “wobbling flap” of a scarf or for headphones.

On the other hand, for all this you get one of the coolest shopping centers in Moscowby the number of people, their solvency, plus an unrealistically cool internal layout and the right infrastructure. There are not very many shopping centers of this class in terms of the totality of signs from the number of people to the thought-out of internal routes in Moscow - these are Mega, Metropolis and Evropeysky. Maybe a couple more reaches for them, but loses the audience. The fact is that people come here for one specific purpose - to spend money. A person can enter a regular shopping center because he walked by, wanted to click with his beak and put money on the phone. In Mega this will never happen. And, if we talk about infrastructure, you should definitely pay attention once again to the initially correct layout - it is made so that a person will visit about 80% of stores per visit, even if he comes for groceries and a shirt.

Most of the jambs of the entrance to shopping centers, as a rule, is associated with a lack of understanding of all the details of work . Mega, in this regard, for the techie, everything is just perfect. An agreement is given in a thick hand, where everything is spelled out. If it seems to you that not everything is there, read it again. This is really very useful. If you just flip through it as a license agreement in 20 minutes - well, you yourself are an evil cormorant.

The next moment. You can’t climb onto a stream with a seller who is not properly trained.If there is no good school or a good personal example of an experienced senior (who has already worked at another point before that) - burnout is simply provided. This is doubly important for the island: if you get up in the aisle, the crowd sees you as an obstacle and goes around. You need something really cool in the product and the seller’s job to sell. Depending on the experience (from an intern to a two-year-old), our delta in terms of sales is about half an order. Learning from the flow is an impermissible luxury (but, of course, interns work in our Mega stores together with experienced paired ones).

All processes should be debugged prior to automatism.Opening - according to calculation, according to plan, day-to-day (which is very difficult, and we are always surprised how we manage). Deliveries are limited, you need to fit into the schedule of the shopping center, and not yours (in Mega, loading of goods is possible only at night). Different expectations from the formats, different style of work on the island and the store, necessarily - an unobtrusive service without this “How to help you” from the door. The first phrases to the client are a whole art, and it is more than in demand in large shopping centers. In general, you need to think with your head and carefully study the experience of other stores. When we opened the first store, we didn’t start from Moscow - we trained in a region where prices are lower. Later they came to Moscow. Because common sense: if you can test somewhere in miniature, you don’t have to throw at production. If in doubt, just find someone with profitability near yours and ask. Or count. This is the first thing to start with.

The opening process on the example of another shopping center

We did not take pictures in Mega, but there are pictures from the new Bravo shopping center. Fundamentally, processes differ only in the complexity of approvals. We also drove into Bravo before the opening of the entire shopping center, when repairs were going on on the entire floor.

Here is our pavilion in a row. This picture is usually frightening to an unprepared viewer, but for us it is completely normal - after a couple of hundreds of shopping centers examined for the opening of a store, here we already see a large stream and beautiful neighbors:



Here is the row itself:



At the beginning of work, we had one wire, one light bulb and that’s it. There were no walls (they already appear in the photo here), there was no window display. It was necessary to do projects for everything and work them out. And so it became in a couple of weeks:



As you can see, we divided the store into a part-warehouse and part-hall. Behind the sellers hang jackets, fold up goods to make up shelves, and so on. Here is the corridor:



At this point, we made walls, painted them with our red paint where necessary, where red is not needed - there is white. Finishing, electrics, then - furniture at the last moment. The full checklist of the opening of the point was worked out for about two years, includes 40 related processes and takes several meters in Visio. Naturally, everything starts in parallel - we are looking for people for the opening, and we “give birth” to the new senior for the launch, and the furniture arrives exactly on time, and the goods appear at the moment when the furniture is assembled and arranged. To repeat this without training and skills is more expensive for yourself, there are a lot of little things there. From the outside, it might seem that they’re doing flesh there - he opened a hrenak-hrenak. Any IT specialist can handle it. Actually, in such cases, the result is a little predictable, because the devil is in the details.


^{The "night" castle arrives last, so the door at the still under construction object is fixed by a bicycle.}

You need to be able to communicate with builders, draw up such agreements in advance so that the delay in time for the manufacturer of the same furniture is more expensive than the timely execution of the contract, and you must correctly take into account thousands of points in the plan. I’ll say right away that I don’t even know how much of this, but we have people who have opened 20 stores each.

Yes! Now imagine that you open 3-4 stores at the same time, as we regularly do in the fall. Warm in the soul?

This is how the store looks on the opening day:



Mega in such cases still gives a carpet and allows you to hang balls.

The photo shows that the goods in the first delivery are not enough - it is necessary that the shelves break from it (they will be, there is a warehouse behind the door, and boxes with delivery on the floor).



We add the goods, we start.

Summary

You need to understand that Mega is only in Russia, and they appeared because Ikea needed to attract people to their stores. They found a good niche - centers of this level simply did not exist. Actually, it’s good to learn from them the European approach to retail, and apply this knowledge where possible. Mega is a good transition from normal to hard. With a corresponding increase in prize points.

In December, we “slammed” another 7 islet shops at the New Year’s markets in Mega, where our store had not yet been. Plus, similar stores in other large shopping centers. In the case of our profitability, the islands live only in December-January, maybe even before March 10 - further the format leaves them no chance. Therefore, we “explode” them for the holidays, and then close them - this format is called a “pop-up store”, and all shopping centers are ready for it, making special trading floors inside for such tenants. By December - everything goes according to plan, we expect to earn even taking into account the ruble exchange rate. Although, of course, it will not be the same as last year.

Here is one of these fairs. The most important moment for the right sales is the interface of the island itself. God forbid to make it a little more closed than now - the conversion will be cut off like a knife. Beautiful pictures of typical island formats do not work at all, they have corny wrong sides.



Permanent stores in Mega show themselves well both in Moscow, and in Nizhny Novgorod, and for a long time. By the way, in the same Nizhny Novgorod we regularly hold our playrooms on the playground at the junction with Ikea. In general, as usual - common sense and calculation. And a little less than high expectations: I know at least three store owners who tried to get into large shopping centers and received a huge rental cost instead of the expected profit. When you see a successful store on the stream, naturally, you immediately want to trade the same way. The understanding that everything depends not only on the place, but also on the model, comes a bit later, after a couple of mistakes. Developing an untested and untreated model is like counting on the perfect alpha version.