Celebrating the Legacy
Client: Vanderbilt Equities Corporation + Manchester Designer outlets
Title: Celebrating the Legacy
Category: Branding
Challenge:
Given today’s challenging brick-and-mortar retail climate, Vanderbilt Equities Corporation was beginning to experience an increased number of tenant vacancies at its property, Manchester Designer Outlets, a 135,000 square foot shopping destination nestled within the quaint walking town of Manchester, Vermont. Contacting SSMG with an immediate need to raise its leasing activity, the agency’s recommendation to produce an enhanced, printed leasing kit with an elevated look and feel was met with inherent industry and marketplace challenges including:
- Combatting Manchester Designer Outlets’ long-time identity throughout the outlet retail industry as a legacy center – one perceived negatively as an older or outdated shopping destination.
- A tourism-driven regional marketplace devoid of a significant, year-round dense consumer population to promote.
Approach:
Following a two-day site visit to the market, SSMG instinctively knew that the outlet center’s “legacy” moniker would not be treated as a negative, but rather as a positive selling point – an attribute that would be celebrated on every page. Without hesitation, SSMG not only set out to provide ownership with an informative leasing tool containing pertinent property and marketplace information from which to attract new retailers, but one that would tell the shopping center’s unique story, presenting it through an unconventional and creative presentation.
Tactics:
- The SSMG team completed a two-day site visit to not only experience the outlet shopping destination first-hand, but the Manchester marketplace as a whole. The site visit included in-depth conversations with Manchester Designer Outlets’ long-time owner/operator to learn about the project’s history and 30+ year evolution.
- Completed an in-depth research effort to:
- Collect regional permanent population and household income statistics.
- Learn about the marketplace’s year-round visitor appeal and popular points of interest.
- Locate consumer reviews of the center’s overall shopping experience.
- Read current editorial pieces pertaining to the overall region.
- Crafted a personal letter from Manchester Designer Outlets’ owner which discussed the center’s position throughout the industry as a celebrated legacy property – a unique component not found in a traditional property leasing kit tool.
- Without being able to tout meaningful permanent population demographics, SSMG positioned the shopping center itself as a top point-of-interest located within a lucrative, year-round tourism-driven marketplace.
- Completed a thorough imagery search to choose photographs that effectively illustrated the annual appeal of a visit to Manchester.
- Incorporated high-end production techniques into the business-to-business tool’s design and layout including:
- Dye cut cover
- Metallic ink
- Select vellum pages
- Perfect binding
Results:
SSMG presented to Vanderbilt Equities Corporation a highly-unique, 20-page Manchester Designer Outlets’ leasing kit that will serve an effective tool to market the property as an established, well-performing legacy center located within a popular visitor marketplace.
Complete with relevant data including permanent population and tourism demographics and statistics; an in-depth primer on the visitor market; and a competitive retail analysis, the leasing kit’s enhanced look and feel coupled by its unexpected content and presentation, will make its debut on the convention floor at 2018’s ICSC RECon Dealmaking Conference.
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