French REIT Klépierre and Germany’s ECE walked off with some of the key prizes at the Mapic Awards ceremony in Cannes on Thursday.
Klépierre’s Hoog Catharijne shopping centre in the central Dutch city of Utrecht won the award for Best Urban Retail Project. The French company also took the Best Futura Shopping Centre award for the Prado centre in Marseille, developed together with Montecristo Capital.
ECE likewise won two accolades, the award for Best O2O Strategy with its Digital Mall and the Industry Achievement Award which went to Klaus Striebich, ECE’s managing director of leasing.
The Digital Mall has been available on the website of ECE’s Alstertal-Einkaufszentrum in Hamburg since December 2016. It enables customers to experience and browse the wares of 23 participating shops including Saturn, Christ, Hunkemöller, Gant, Görtz, Brax and Clas Ohlson.
In the first 10 months since its launch, the website recorded 100,000 visits and the pages had more than 300,000 hits. The Digital Mall is set to be rolled out at more German centres in 2018, ECE said.
‘We are very pleased to receive these renowned awards,’ commented Alexander Otto, CEO of ECE. ‘Receiving the award for the Digital Mall shows that we are on the right track in providing our customers with a true omnichannel experience and thereby efficiently connecting both online and offline,’ he said.
The award for Best New Shopping Centre went to Hammerson’s Victoria Gate in Leeds, the largest retail and leisure venue in Northern England (53,400 m2) which opened its doors to the public in October 2016.
Other European winners included Imad’s Syrian Kitchen in London for Best Pop Up Shop, the UK’s Rapha Racing for Best New Retail Concept, iFLY World in France for Best Leisure Concept in a Retail Space and Flying Tiger Copenhagen for Best Retail Global Expansion. The award for Customer Service Excellence went to sales employee Rosario Lozano Bretone at electronics retailer MediaMarkt Saturn in Spain.
The winners were picked from 54 finalists by a 17-strong jury.
