46pc sales slump at Pacific Place, says tenant of upmarket mall
Boss of lingerie brand blames Occupy protesters for disrupting shoppers; overall figures edge up
Retail sales value at the Pacific Place mall, located next to the Occupy Central site in Admiralty, dropped 46 per cent in October compared to the same period a year earlier, according to a tenant who received information from the mall's management.
This came as the Census and Statistics Department announced yesterday that the city's retail sales value in October rose 1.4 per cent year-on-year, despite a previous warning from the Retail Management Association that there might be no growth in retail sales for the month.
"Mall sales at Pacific Place were down 46 per cent year-on-year," said Chiara Scaglia, Asia-Pacific managing director of La Perla, an Italian lingerie brand, which opened a store in the upscale mall in July.
"In my opinion, it's because the [Occupy] protests … created a lot of traffic jams, which made access inconvenient rather than impossible."
A spokeswoman for Swire Properties, owner of the mall, refused to confirm the tenant's remarks but admitted "there has been an impact on our business at Pacific Place".
She also said that the impact on sales volume varied from market to market, with high-end luxury products targeting tourism tending to experience a bigger impact.
"We believe the effect of [Occupy] is short term," she added.
Separately, official figures showed the city's overall retail sales value in October rose to HK$38.3 billion. It went up 4.8 per cent in September.
After correcting for the effect of price changes over the same period, the volume of total retail sales in October rose 4.3 per cent year-on-year.
Sales for electrical goods and photographic equipment went up 23.6 per cent. Other consumer durable goods including smartphones went up 67 per cent, and medicine and cosmetics rose 7.6 per cent.
Jewellery, watches and clocks, and valuable goods went down 11.6 per cent, while clothes sales saw a decline of 8.8 per cent.
Caroline Mak Sui-king, chairwoman of the retail association, said the October figure was still bolstered by sales of the iPhone 6, which came out in mid-September. She believed the November figure could be better because tourists now knew how to avoid conflict areas in Admiralty and Mong Kok.
Mariana Kou, investment analyst at equity broker CLSA, said the retail market was significantly affected by the Occupy movement. The number of mainland tourists to the city was high because many tour groups were booked and paid for in advance, Kou added.
