The owner of Victoria’s Mayfair shopping centre and Nanaimo’s Woodgrove Centre says it’s aiming to hand out $1 million in $10 gift cards by the end of the year in a bid to draw customers back amid a surge in online shopping.
Central Walk plans to host monthly gift-card giveaway events at the shopping centres to build customer loyalty after two years of pandemic that kept customers home and shifted much of their buying online.
The first monthly promotion at Woodgrove is on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It follows a similar event at Mayfair on July 2, said Fang Sun, executive director of Central Walk.
Central Walk is planning to host the events on the first Saturday of each month at Mayfair, she said Monday.
Woodgrove’s event features 40 outdoor stalls in the mall parking lot, plus live music.
Shoppers can use their phones to scan QR codes and can also go to the company’s social media sites. Links to the event will be featured in the Times Colonist in coming days.
Those who spend $100 can participate in physical games — such as throwing a hoop over an upright post — in the malls to win more gift cards, Sun said.
Central Walk also owns Tsawwassen Mills in Delta, where it’s planning a gift-card event on July 23. Details for future events are still being worked out.
Sun said an industry conference recently predicted that some shopping centres could close in the coming decade as customers increasingly switch to online purchasing, so the company hopes to retain shoppers by encouraging them to come to the shopping centres, get gift cards and have fun.
David Ian Gray, retail analyst at DIG360 Consulting Ltd. of Vancouver, said there is no single solution for shopping malls hoping to retain business amid stiff competition online.
“As in other types of business, particularly retail, the strong are getting stronger and the weak are in peril. No different with malls,” he said. “We won’t need quite as many in future and the better retailers will, with exceptions of course, want to be in the successful centres.”
As for the gift-card solution, that also faces competition from online discounts, he said.
“One still needs to want to go to one of those malls.”
