Mountfield, Europe’s largest specialised retailer of garden machinery, swimming pools and home and garden equipment, has chosen the Shopping Palace centre as the site of its new store in Slovakia. Managing the shopping centre since 2013, the MVGM team has created a compact retail space for Mountfield, which covers 1,500 square metres and also includes a warehouse and suitable office space. On the occasion, MVGM summarised the state of Slovakia’s retail market.
In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Mountfield operates a network of 77 stores and a similar number of service and swimming pool centres. The Slovak part of the portfolio includes 19 stores across the country. Each Mountfield store houses a professional service centre. The company started 30 years ago by opening a small store in Mnichovice in Central Bohemia.
Shopping Palace offers 18,500 square metres of leasable retail area plus 5,000 square metres of office space. Shopping Palace was the first modern shopping centre in Slovakia and underwent a series of modernisations and a redesign of its food courts, sanitary facilities and entrance portal in 2013. Shopping Palace’s key tenants include DM, Dráčik, Deichmann, Fann Parfumerie, New Yorker, Panta Rhei, Kik, Pepco, Tedi, Banquet, Sportisimo, Slovak Post and Buppi Children’s World.
“Mountfield is a strong partner with an extensive retail network and a high-quality range of products and services for gardens and beyond. The acquisition of a retail brand as strong as Mountfield proves to MVGM and Shopping Palace that the ongoing change in our strategy is yielding results. We can already confirm on behalf of MVGM that we will soon announce another major success our company has achieved for Shopping Palace as part of its new strategy,” says Erik Molčan, Shopping Palace Center Manager at MVGM.
2 million square metres of retail in Slovakia
Slovakia’s prime retail supply reached almost 2.05 million sqm by the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. Bratislava region accounts for the majority, representing approx. 32%, followed by Košice, Žilina and Nitra region. There is currently ca 158,000 sqm of new retail area under construction. The largest projects are situated in Bratislava and Košice. The majority of the modern retail stock is represented by shopping centres with 64% followed by retail parks with ca 27%. The rest of the stock with a share of 9% consists of retail galleries, department stores and concept stores.
In the last quarter of 2020, 40,000 sqm of new stock was added to the market: Novum Prešov (Shopping Centre in Prešov), OC Piritov (Retail Park in Nové Zámky) and RS Park (Retail Gallery in Rimavská Sobota). There are two gigantic projects under construction in Bratislava: Nivy Mall with approx. 70,000 sqm and the Eurovea extension with approx. 25,000 sqm.
The COVID-19 outbreak has provided the retail industry with challenges of an unprecedented scale. The online sales channel has been the main beneficiary of consumers' inability or unwillingness to visit physical stores during the COVID-19 outbreak. The promise of a vaccine and life returning to normal in H2 2021 will allow investors to stabilize cash-flows and establish asset valuations.
