Movers and Shakers Hone their Skills at ICSC European Retail Property School

The Continuing Education programme was a chance for participants from 22 European countries to make valuable and enduring business contacts abroad

As a keen 23-year-old, Marsha Freeman has a promising retail career in front of her. This past 3rd to 8th July, the marketing manager for St. Johns Shopping Centre in Liverpool, UK, took an important professional step when she joined 15 other European Shopping Centre Trust scholars in Brussels to attend ICSC Europe’s 2005 European Retail Property School (ERPS).
The school, whose faculty comprised of some of the region’s most knowledgeable shopping centre professionals, featured classes on such topics as leasing, retailing, design, construction, market research, marketing and communications, and business and marketing plan development. Other subjects covered managing mixed-use and urban centres, tourism, sponsorship and finance.
“On a personal level, as one of the younger students of the group, I felt the school enhanced my levels of confidence, as it forced me to present my own opinions and share my experiences with a classroom full of strangers, some with 10 to 15 years of marketing experience,” Freeman said.
“I think the most important aspect of the school was that it acted as a platform for people from all over to come together, get to know each other, swap their ideas and approaches, and take something away that they didn’t already know before.”
Indeed, the school welcomed students from not only the UK but also from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain.
These networking opportunities turned out to be just as good as Pawel Kurcz had hoped.
“I met many very interesting people. I even organized a small group of people from my class and we exchange our knowledge and experience even now, after the school,” said Kurcz, the marketing manager at Metro Asset Group Management Polska in Warsaw, Poland. “It is some kind of supporting group. I created a marketing activities report and we exchange different things, like kind of activities, goals, budget, media used, things to be aware of and results.”
For Kurcz, being able to draw from market experiences in the Western part of Europe was another bonus, given that the shopping centre industry in Poland is relatively young. While there are several courses, seminars and other continuing education opportunities there, instructors often lack in experience. By contrast, Kurcz said the teachers at the ERPS were anything but green.
“One of the teachers was great, Eileen Connolly from Donaldsons Europe. It was really an unforgettable experience for me,” Kurcz recalled. “She had  the lecture [on] Strategic Marketing to Enhance Centre Productivity and it was great to hear her ideas. For such a lecture it is worth going anywhere. I was very impressed.”
Other teachers left just as lasting an impression, including Tony Longstaff, whom Kurcz nicknamed the “showman” after attending his Marketing Urban and Mixed-Use Centres presentation. And then there was Zita Matias, who was more reserved but stood out for being so well prepared, offering applicable theories during her session on Integrated Marketing Strategies.
Magda Navas said she also walked away from the school with a few more tricks to apply to her duties as a marketing assistant for Diagonal Mar Centre in Barcelona, Spain.
“I got information about an event that was done by one of my colleagues in my class. It was an event done in Italy, but [it] can also be done in Spain. Great! I have already applied [other] ideas learnt at the classes.”
Freeman was even able to catch a glimpse of the future for her scheme, which is the largest shopping centre in Liverpool and one of the most successful properties in the retail portfolio of Land Securities plc.
“These [class] topics were invaluable, introducing me to new concepts that are not already in place in my centre—for example, looking at the centre from a sales analysis perspective by categorising the centre into mall locations that do well, best-selling categories of stores and the best selling individual stores within a certain category,” she explained.
“From this, marketing manager will be able to more closely identify what works, what doesn’t and try to understand why tenants are successful or failing. During each session, students were encouraged to get into groups and solve certain shopping centre dilemmas. It was great to be challenged.”
These three scholars and their properties certainly benefitted from ICSC Europe placing such high priority on education.
“With the enormous challenges facing management, marketing and leasing professionals in shopping centres throughout Europe, the key to continuous successful growth is through the development of next generation shopping centre professionals led by today’s industry leaders,” the council stated when it announced this year’s group of scholars.
Under the leadership of Ermine Amies, ICSC Europe’s managing director, the ERPS hopes to mentor many more scholars like Freeman, Kurcz and Navas.
This autumn, the organisation will hold two more educational events: the Third European Marketing Seminar and the Fifth ICSC Europe Research Seminar.
For details, visit www.ICSC.org/europe.