Gastronomy and fashion continue to rank amongst the fastest growing product categories at Aéroports de Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport’s shops.

 

As a result, ADP and its retail partners plan to expand the offer and make it even better, according to Marie Haverbeke, ADP General Manager, Product Offering & Customer Development Department Retail Division.

Speaking to TRBusiness.com late last year, she said: “We are going on developing the brand portfolio, especially in fashion and you will see it in (CDG) 2A with Michael Kors for instance, but not only that. Then in fine food we have a strong partnership with Ladurée and La Maison du Chocolat and SDA with Fauchon and many other brands, so that’s a key product category for us.

[Ladurée is a French luxury bakery famous for its macaroons. Besides signature shops, it also operates an acclaimed restaurant at CDG. As is well known, Société de Distribution Aéroportuaire is the 50-50 joint venture with Lagardère Services’ subsidiary Aelia].

Haverbeke said that ADP has been working on increasing the spend per head in both the fashion and gastronomy categories and has seen good growth in 2014. This came on the back of the 15% sales growth achieved in the fashion category in 2013 and the same percentage progress in gastronomy over the same period.

This is expected to show even more growth when the 2014 calendar year results are out and Haverbeke says this is a reflection expanding the offer from one single monobrand in fine food in 2006, to 20 by the end of 2012.

FASHION AND GASTRONOMY EXPANSION

She said: “So we are pretty convinced about the fact that it’s an international success for us. Customers enjoy [the offer] very much, especially the [Ladurée] macaroon chocolates, which are very much appreciated in many countries.

“It is also the same for the fashion brands. We had six of what you could call style fashion brands in 2006 and then 16 from mid June 2012 and now we have even more at around 20. So we’ve also been developing the branded fashion portfolio very strongly.

Besides its large standalone full-line fashion boutiques located in CDG2E Hall K, such as Chanel, Dior, Cartier and Hermès, ADP also has multi-brand shops, but it tries not to repeat these offers. The offerings featured in these multi brand stores are ‘very often Parisian fashion brands’ with only a few exceptions, says Haverbeke.

“We want to be as good and even better as [retail offers in] downtown Paris, so we have to have the brand new concepts that you can find in Paris,” she said.

Having said that, Haverbeke acknowledged that ADP – like everyone else – has obviously noticed the pressure on currency exchange rates amongst traditionally good spenders such as Russians and Japanese in particular and the company is meeting the challenge as best as it can. As she says: “It would be too easy if it was only a story of offer or duty free price or concepts. Currency rates are also another factor, so we’re following currency rates closely.”

ADP also tracks average customer spending levels by nationality and destination, with €32 ($32.24) attributed to ‘international passengers’ as a whole in 2013 (all nationalities/all destinations) and €115 ($137.45) for all customers travelling to China (not just Chinese nationals-Ed]. It will be interesting to note how these numbers have developed in 2014 when ADP reports its calendar year results shortly.

(Right: Marie Haverbeke, ADP General Manager, Product Offering & Customer Development Department Retail Division).

RETAIL MIX PROGRESSING WELL

As is well known, besides its 50-50 JV with Aelia/Lagardère Services for duty free and travel retail, ADP also has a very successful and growing joint venture called Relay@ADP, in which it owns 49%, Lagardère Services owns 49% and the remaining 2% is held by SDA.

This manages 56 shops with a total floor space of nearly 7,000sq m throughout the terminals at Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly and achieved a sales turnover in 2013 of €65m ($77.6m) versus €55m ($65.7m) in 2012. There has also been some good progress in expanding the product mix within these stores in terms of electronics and souvenirs in particular, said Haverbeke.

Aéroports de Paris and Lagardère Services have also developed a very impressive and relatively new brand new concept of shops selling Parisian souvenirs, called Air de Paris.

As reported already, by 2015, Aéroports de Paris says it is hoping to become the European leader in airport retail in terms of economic performance, innovation and customer satisfaction.

ADP is already committed to investing between €140m and €150m ($167m and $179m) on developing its retail activities between 2011 and 2015. This will include improvements to its food and beverage offer where a tender process is currently in motion.

In the nine months to September, ADP – which obviously operates Paris Orly Airport as well – saw its Retail & Services division contract slightly by -0.4% to €705m ($876m) – but retail revenue held up, generating growth of +3.2% to €291m ($362m).

Retail growth was ahead of the +2.4% passenger increase at both Paris airports, producing a general total retail sales rise per passenger of +1.9% to €17.50/$20.92.

[For more financial details, click here: http://www.trbusiness.com/index.php/regional/europe/16337-2014-11-14-02-26-33.html].