Carrefour opens first community mall

Carrefour Suanluang houses a mini-market and 18 retail units.

France-based Carrefour has extended its business role from retail hypermarket to the developer of a shopping centre, opening its first community mall recently on Chaloemprakiet Rama IX Road in the Suanluang area of Bangkok.

Named Carrefour Suanluang, the community mall contains a 2,000-square-metre Carrefour mini-market and another 18 commercial units rented by retail vendors. The complex will open daily from 9am to 11pm.

Carrefour is another hypermarket player joining the new chapter of small retail format competition, following Tesco Lotus which recently announced it would to develop its own community malls.

"We developed our community mall to serve individual shoppers living in Suanluang," said Prapaphan Ploysangngam, marketing manager of CenCar, the operator of Carrefour hypermarket stores. "It is in line with our internal survey finding that consumers have adjusted their shopping behaviour to cope with higher living costs, particularly the increase in petrol prices. They prefer to shop near home."

Opened last month, the market attracts 2,500 shoppers a day with an average transaction of about Bt500 - much lower than a standard Carrefour hypermarket, which attracts between 4,000 and 5,000 shoppers daily.

With an investment of Bt140 million, the Carrefour Suanluang community mall is expected to reach a breakeven point in five years. The mall is expected to generate revenues of between Bt400 million and Bt500 million annually, of which 70 per cent will be from its own market sales and another 30 per cent from rental fees of floor space to retailers.

Prapaphan said the new Carrefour Suanluang would serve shoppers who live in areas five kilometres from the shopping centre or not more than a 20-minute drive.

"With the development of our community mall, Carrefour will be quite flexible in expanding our diversified hypermarket formats to meet specific demands of consumers in particular communities," she said.

CenCar regional director Phidsanu Pongwatana said that the market at Suanluang handles 30,000 product items, half the number carried by its standard hypermarket. About 10 per cent of the merchandise is house brand products.

"We have divided our Carrefour hypermarket stores into three major formats depending on size," he said. "They are the standard hypermarket format with a total retail space of 6,000 square metres, the compact hypermarket format with 4,000 sqm and the mini hypermarket format with 2,000 sqm. The different retail formats will serve shoppers at different locations depending on the availability of land and retail space as well as investment possibilities."

He added that the average investment required for a standard hypermarket was Bt400 million and for a compact hypermarket Bt300 million.

 Carrefour early this year opened one mini hypermarket outlet at Sukhapiban 1 and two compact hypermarket outlets at Rangsit Klong 3 and Nongchok. The company also plans to open two more stores this year in Chiang Mai and Bangkok.

Carrefour currently operates 25 hypermarket stores in Thailand, including upcountry stores in Chon Buri, Hat Yai, Chiang Mai, Nakhon Sri Thammarat and Phuket. At least six Carrefour hypermarket stores will be opened next year in different formats.