Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to the fact that Western brands left the Russian market. The owners of retail space in shopping centers are sounding the alarm - if there are no other tenants, then the shopping center will be half empty. This was stated by the first vice-president of Crocus Group Emin Agalarov, write RosSMI.

Brands are gone, but retail space remains.

So far, shopping centers have not yet lost traffic, but Agalarov expects this will happen soon if stores do not open..

“Today we sank by 20-30% in attendance, but if you don’t have “anchors” (anchor tenants – ed.. ), you have no visitors,” he added.

The businessman noted that H\u0026M, Zara, Adidas and cinemas were the main traffic generators with key locations in shopping centers..

“During construction, shopping centers are designed for potential tenants. Therefore, to hand over the key locations of these companies, which occupied up to 4-5 thousand. sq.. m, no one. Other tenants with such revenue - conditionally, 100 million rubles. per month - no,"

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According to him, the rental rate has always consisted of a fixed part and a percentage of turnover, which was offset by high revenue..

“Another network will not have such revenue, no matter what you trade there, except for drugs, if it is legal. It would be possible to recapture the lease, but otherwise it will not work. If you have a luxury shopping center, you need Prada, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, if the middle category is Zara, H\u0026M, Reebok, Adidas. And if they are not there, then the site is depersonalized,"

According to Agalarov, neither parallel imports nor attempts to create schemes for the purchase of branded goods through other countries discussed on the market will work..

“Firstly, there are a lot of restrictions for such imports, and besides, neither Azerbaijan, nor Georgia, nor Kazakhstan will want to become a buffer for Russia, because they could potentially fall under sanctions,” he explained..

Recall that the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation predicted a fall in GDP, but the Russian Ministry of Finance considers the forecast optimistic. In the conservative forecast scenario, the Ministry of Economic Development expects a fall in Russia's GDP in 2022 by 12.4%.