How normal guys go to Megu: 7 stores per month

^{We are in Mega Khimki, a photo of one of our secret buyers on an independent verification}

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

First, you need to understand that Mega is a real Klondike. If you know and be able to. The reason is very simple - there are actually a lot of people (not every shopping center can do this), they are all focused on shopping and are very solvent, plus a very correct and well-developed infrastructure, procedures. What, actually, from pluses can become minuses if you did not develop to the necessary level.
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We have opened a store in Khimki since spring, a store in Nizhny Novgorod has been open for a year and a half, there was a store in Mega Ufa. In December, we opened another 7 stores in Megah.

So, Mega is a very expensive place. They are well aware of their value and set the appropriate rent. That is why it simply does not make sense to open the first, second or third store there - if you do not know the rate of revenue from the flow with certain indicators, you yourself will burn, and at the same time you will create a landlord for hemorrhoids to change the "tenant". And these difficulties in the optimal game, in general, are not needed by anyone. It is advantageous to stand long and tenant, and the landlord. Actually, it was in our first store in Mega, in Ufa, that was the rake.

But we did not draw the conclusions “damn it, here I am no longer with my foot,” but quite positive ones. In a sense, they recalculated the model, determined the boundaries, where it becomes profitable, thought ... and went in 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 sizeable penalty. Opening a store in a large shopping center of this class is more difficult than on a regular street and more difficult than in a regular shopping center. At the entrance they give only a box with input, it is necessary to coordinate all projects very strictly. On the road - you need to return everything back to the state of the same box, dismantling everything of your own (usually the shopping center is allowed to leave). Too late to open - fine. Garbage around the store - fine. Seller in slippers - fine. Move the goods during the day on the shelves - fine. They brought an Ikea bag with the goods - fine. All this is done not in order to get the money from the landlord, but so that it functions normally. It opened minute by minute, closed no earlier than the “last bell”, the sellers did not chew the cud, and so on. Harder, perhaps, only at airports - in some they can safely enter for a “wiggling flap” of a scarf or for headphones.

On the other hand, for all this you get one of the coolest shopping centers in Moscow in terms of 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 number of people from the number of people to the thoughtfulness of domestic routes in Moscow - these are Megi, Metropolis and European. Maybe a couple more are drawn to them, but they lose by the audience. The fact is that they come here for one specific purpose - to spend money. A person can go to an ordinary shopping center because he was walking past, he wanted to flip 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 to the originally correct layout - it is made so that a person will visit about 80% of the stores per visit, even if he came for groceries and a shirt.

Most of the shoals entering the shopping centers, as a rule, is associated with a lack of understanding of all the details of work . Mega is just perfect for a techie. A contract is given in hand as thick, where everything is spelled out. If you think that there is not everything - read again. This is really very helpful. If you just scroll through it as a license agreement in 20 minutes - well, you yourself are the evil cormorant.

Next moment. You can not climb to the stream with the seller, who is incorrectly trained. If there is no good school or a good personal example of an experienced senior (who has already worked at another point before this), the burnout is simply assured. 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 work of the seller to sell. Depending on the experience (from trainee to two-year-olds), the delta in our country is about half a point in the number of sales. Studying on the stream is an unaffordable luxury (but, naturally, the interns work in our Mega stores together with experienced ones in a pair).

All processes should be debugged to automatism. Opening - according to the calculation, according to the plan, day-to-day (which is very difficult, and we are always surprised at how we manage). Deliveries are limited, you need to fit into the schedule of the shopping center, but not your own (in Mega, loading of goods is possible only at night). Different expectations of formats, different style of work on the island and the store, necessarily - unobtrusive service without this “How to help you” from the threshold. The first phrases to the client are a whole art, and it is more than demanded in large shopping centers. In general, it is necessary to think a head and carefully study the experience of other stores. When we opened the first store, we did not start from Moscow - we trained in the region, where prices are lower. Later they came to Moscow. Because common sense: if you can test it somewhere in miniature, you are not putting a 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

In Mega, we did not take pictures, but there are pictures from the new Bravo shopping center. Fundamentally, processes differ only in the complexity of approvals. In Bravo, we also stopped in before the opening of the entire shopping center, when the repair was going on the whole floor.

Here is our pavilion in the row. This picture is usually scary for an unprepared viewer, but for us it is perfectly normal - after a couple of hundred shopping centers for the opening of a store, here we already see a large flow and beautiful neighbors:



Here is the series itself:



At the beginning of the work we had one wire, one light bulb and that's it. There was no wall (here they already appear in the photo), there were no showcases. It was necessary to do projects for everything and work them out. So it became 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 goods to fill the shelves and so on. Here is the corridor:



By this moment we have made the walls, painted them with our red paint where necessary, where we don’t need red - there is white. Finishing, electrician, then - furniture at the last moment. The complete checklist of the opening point was worked out for about two years, includes 40 related processes and takes several meters in Visio. Naturally, everything starts in parallel - and we are looking for people to discover, and the new elder is “born” to launch, and the furniture arrives exactly at the scheduled time, and the goods appear at the moment when the furniture is assembled and arranged. Repeat this without training and skills - more expensive, little things there is the sea. From the side it may seem that there figl do - hrenak-hrenak and opened. Any IT specialist can handle it. Actually, in such cases, the result is a bit predictable, because the devil is in the details.


^{The “night” castle is the last to arrive, so the door on the object that is still under construction is fixed by bicycle.}

You need to be able to communicate with builders, draw up such contracts in advance, so that the delay is the manufacturer of the same furniture more expensive than the timely execution of the contract, correctly consider thousands of points in the plan. Immediately I say - I don’t even know a third of all this, but we have people who have opened and 20 stores each.

Yes! Now imagine that you open 3-4 stores at the same time, as we regularly happen in the fall. Has become warmer on soul?

This is how the store looks on the opening day:



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

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



We put out the goods, we start.

Results

It is necessary to understand that Megi is only in Russia, and they appeared because Ikea needed to attract people to his shops. They found a good niche - there was simply no such level of centers. Actually, it is good to learn from them the European approach to retail, and to 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” 7 more island islands on the New Year markets in Megah, where our store had not yet been. Plus similar stores in other large shopping centers. The islands in the case of our profitability live only December-January, maybe even before March 10 - the format does not leave them a chance. Therefore, we “explode” with them for the holidays, and then close it - this format is called “pop-shop”, and all the shopping centers are ready for it, making special trading platforms inside for such tenants. In 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 proper sales is the interface of the island itself. God forbid, to make it a little more closed than it is now - the conversion will cut off like a knife. Beautiful pictures of typical formats of islands do not work at all, their corners are irregular.



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