NEWS THAT LEAVES A MARK.
Is Covid-19 Really To Blame for Queensway’s Bad Business?
Jesminpal Kaur
3rd February 2022
Reporter
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ZACHARY SEE, ANDRES WO and JESMINPAL KAUR find out about the issues business owners are facing at Queensway Shopping Centre.
With fewer shoppers, some stores in Queensway Shopping Centre are slowly closing down. Photo: Andres Wo.
To many, Queensway Shopping Centre was the one-stop shop for sports equipment and sneakers. But with the pandemic, the 47-year-old mall has experienced a lack of customers. Even before the pandemic, the mall was slowly losing footfall, with an en bloc sale being attempted to make the mall relevant again.
Mr Samuel Lee, 18, a student, was a regular patron of the mall before the pandemic, with it being a hangout spot for him and his friends.
“Last time, it was on the way home from my school and conveniently, there [is] a McDonalds there, so it was a weekly affair for me and my friends to go and eat ice cream over there.”
But now, with the pandemic hitting and schools largely becoming a mix of home-based and in-school learning, he hardly visits the mall.
A lack of relevant services and facilities at the mall was also a driving factor, and other than the occasional visit to “repair [his] sports equipment”, there was “not a lot of things to do there”.
Shop owners in Queensway are reeling from the drop in sales since the pandemic began. Mohammed Saleh, 40, second generation owner of Saleh Enterprises, a store in Queensway as old as the mall itself, says that the Circuit Breaker forced his business to plummet.
Customers weren’t the only obstacle either.
Mr Saleh says, “One thing we face is, even supply of goods are lesser because of Covid,” and as a result many customers “could not get [clothes in] their sizes”. It made business difficult as it kept customers waiting for their orders.
With Singapore's planned increase in GST from 7 to 9 per cent, Saleh worries that potential customers, like tourists, will be increasingly unwilling to shop, knowing that countries like Taiwan and Thailand have lower GSTs.
However, while the pandemic exacerbated the decline in business at the mall, it may not be the root of the problem.
Zachary See Sheng Yuan
Visual Editor
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Andres Wo Yixuan
Designer
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Empty corridors filled the halls of Queensway Shopping Centre as the traffic count continues to remain low. Photo: Andres Wo.
“Before Covid, just rewind 10 years, you can actually see footfall decreasing,” says Mr Leroy Zhong, a lecturer at Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s School of Business & Accountancy, “Covid probably just exacerbated the problem.”
Even before Covid-19, retail sales in Singapore were declining, with sales falling for three consecutive years before 2021. The problem lies not in the pandemic, but instead on the rise of e-commerce and whether businesses can make the shift to stay relevant.
“The biggest disease for physical retail is still e-commerce,” says Mr Zhong.
“Consumers shopping online get a lot more information, it has shifted how consumers shop,” says Mr Zhong. “You get a lot of information online and naturally, you also purchase online because you have to make that decision to purchase.”
However, physical stores still hold a lot of value.
“There are some things [a physical store provides] that you cannot replace. For example, the try, the touch, the see, the feel. You can’t do this online,” says Mr Zhong. “So what stores can do today, not just because of Covid but because of the competition from e-commerce, is to bridge that gap in value.”
Mr Saleh agrees, saying that “[customers] don’t want to buy the dress without trying [it on]”. He explained that since many of his customers are middle-aged, they prefer physical stores for the experience of trying on the cutting and size before making the decision to buy the product.
So in order to survive, businesses at Queensway can start integrating the online into the offline. The key is to find out what the customers value, and integrate it into their physical store.
“If [the value] is information that's presented, for example, the ease of looking at a pair of shoes, finding reviews online, can your physical retail therefore bridge that gap and offer that value? … If let’s say you have QR codes on every label of the shoe, you scan it, you get reviews from other customers. Then perhaps, you can bridge that gap a little bit,” says Mr Zhong.
Ultimately, it is up to the shop owners to learn to stay relevant.
Mr Zhong says, “If there's a gap in skills, photography or knowing what people look for online, then they need to actually acquire those skills to remain relevant.”
