I think this story is repeating all over the world, with fast and ubiquitous online shopping making “in person shopping” less of a necessity, malls are converting.
The malls that I do see succeeding arn’t focused on shopping for stuff, but rather experiences, places to be, food, social activities. (or just a place to get away from the heat.)
There is the high margin high spend retail fashion malls that still exist for the high touch items people want to see in person, but not enough demand in this space to support all the legacy malls out there.
I’ve been to malls in Malaysia… for the technology malls, its kinda pointless. Its a bunch of small shops covering a huge mall… ALL OF THEM SELLING THE SAME 100 things. No variety, no specialization, if you do want something they don’t have - they offer to order it for you. I’m not sure why this is so common, maybe people love to haggle?
The online experience is much better, even as bad as the interface is, you can actually find what you want, quickly, and not have to haggle (in the mall is still more expensive then online).
Example Bose QC35 Replacement ear pads in the mall $20… the SAME EXACT ear pads from aliexpress $2.50 shipped.
I was at a mall in Kuala Lumpur and was impressed that they had ice skating right in the middle of the mall. Thought that was pretty cool. It was really hot outside but walk into the mall and go ice skating. It was right next to a water park which was also really nice. It seemed like people were there to cool off and walk around but not really shop. Maybe that is the social gathering point for those communities? I was o key there for a week so can’t say I got acquainted with the community but it seemed kinda nice.
It is. Mall in Malaysia is more than just shopping, it’s the second place where people went for hangout and walk around and date. You can see multigeneration family went there and just window shop. Of course right now there’s a surplus of mall available and being build, because developer tend to have a mall right below their “luxurious” apartment so they can jack up the price, these mall are always either left empty or just struggling to have shopper. It’s a zero sum game that the developer are playing with, but it’s the shop owner and renter the one that’s suffering.
No experience with Malaysian malls, but in Shenzhen asking the price in English instead of Chinese comes with a big markup.
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Build shit to make the economy look better
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Nobody rents buildings
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Demo buildings
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Repeat
China been doing that for years now, thats why Evergalrande failed and why a bunch of other Chinese property companies are fucked beyond belief
Editing to add this about Chinas banks:
Sorry Malaysia too little too late bros. You missed it
