LEGENDS OUTLETS KANSAS CITY & SSMG WIN A MAXI

Legends Outlets Kansas City (Kan.) was the only outlet center to win a 2016 ICSC MAXI Award. The annual national award highlights the retail real estate industry’s most innovative marketing events, programs and technologies that add value to shopping centers and retail companies across the United States.

This year is also the third in a row that Strategy +Style Marketing Group, which created and ran the winning campaign for the center, has received the gold MAXI. S+S’s winning campaign was a marketing strategy – Pop to Perm – that successfully converted a temporary Coach Outlet pop-up store at Legends Outlets into a permanent leasing deal. Coach didn’t participate or fund any significant marketing efforts, so S+S and the Legends team set out to creatively work the chain’s brand standards to execute a meaningful, sales-driven marketing program. The rest is history; Coach opened a permanent store in the center a year later, in 2015.

At the time of the campaign, the 1.1 million-sf Legends Outlets was owned by KKR, which sold its share to Walton Street Capital in January.

In accepting the award at RECon in Las Vegas on May 22, S+S partner Karen E. Fluharty said, “Not only do our industry’s annual MAXI awards honor solid strategy and creative execution, but they nod to the power of partnership and collaboration. For the third year in a row we are honored to be recognized by our peers with a gold MAXI award and are grateful to client and partners for their support.”

Several developers that have ownership in outlet centers also picked up awards for their traditional properties. CBL & Associates picked up seven awards (three golds and four silvers), while Brookfield, Howard Hughes, Lightstone, Macerich and Peterson Cos. each won one.