Many top retailers are planning to shut their stores In Delhi-NCR on Thursday and Friday to protest against what they termed delays in getting rental reliefs from the shopping centres. These retailers include Puma, Levi’s, Aditya Birla Fashion, Arvind, Lacoste, Biba and Global Desi.
The group of about 100 retailers are collectively going to send letters to all the NCR malls about their planned protests.
As per news report published in The Economic Times, the retailers have been demanding malls to adopt a pure revenue-share model with no minimum guarantee on rent for a year.
“Retailers are bleeding even more in the second wave,” said Rahul Mehta, one of the coordinators of the protest against shopping centres. The retailers could take their protest to other cities as well.
“We are staging a two-day plea protest demanding a fair deal for retailers from malls,” said the CEO of a global brand.
Nikhil Mohan, Founder, Blackberrys (leading menswear brand) said retailers were asking for complete revenue-sharing with sales pegged to 2019 sales.
“If sales are 100 per cent of the 2019 levels, we will pay 100 per cent rents and if it is 60 per cent we will pay 60 per cent,” Nikhil said.
Blackberrys plans to shut its 15 outlets on those two days in NCR malls.
Retailers are of the view that they’re gazing an unsure future with third wave predicted to hit India in September or October, simply earlier than the festive season when retailers rake in virtually 40 per cent of their annual enterprise.
It is important to mention here that rental issue was raised earlier also as retailers wanted performance-linked rental system but mall were not in the favour of same.
