Metro Fashion Opens its doors in Pratunam

The Nation

The Poolvaraluck family yesterday announced the launch of its latest business: wholesale shopping malls.

This will be the third business run by the family, following  cinema complexes and real estate.

Visin Poolvaraluck, managing director of Metro Fashion Co, which developed the new wholesale shopping mall of the same name in Bangkok's Pratunam area, said he was considering developing land in potential locations like Rangsit and Ratchaburi into warehouse and distribution centres. This would be the family's fourth business and would benefit from the rapid expansion of hypermarkets upcountry and their need for warehouse and logistics services.

Visin is the son of Chamroen, the pioneer of the family's cinema operations. Chamroen established Major Development four years ago to expand into real estate.

"We've spent more than Bt1 billion to develop our plot of land in the Pratunam area into this new wholesale shopping mall. We've seen great potential in Pratunam for wholesale shopping centres for apparel and fashion accessories. Our new mall will especially serve retailers, who can come and purchase products for their retail sales," said Visin.

Scheduled to open officially in next year's first quarter, the new Metro Fashion complex will occupy 6,000 square metres and accommodate 370 wholesale vendors, 90 per cent of them manufacturers. Store space will range from 8-16 square metres, while vendors will have three-year leases and pay monthly rent of Bt800 to Bt1,200 a square metre.

"Almost 90 per cent of our spaces have already been booked. We're very confident Metro Fashion will become one of the leading wholesale fashion malls in Thailand," said Visin.

He said Metro Fashion would attract 10,000-15,000 retail visitors on weekdays and 30,000-40,000 on weekends, bringing in annual revenue of Bt150 million from rents. The company expects to break even in four years.

Visin said the wholesale fashion market had enjoyed consistent growth of 8-10 per cent per annum, because Thailand was a leading country for clothing, plus the government had strongly supported Bangkok becoming an Asian fashion city.

The combined wholesale and retail fashion market is expected to be worth no less than Bt60 billion by the end of the year, 50-60 per cent of which will be accounted for by retail and wholesale malls in Pratunam.