Idlewells Shopping Centre, Sutton-in-Ashfield

Early involvement with our client before they bought the centre meant we were able to increase efficiency, reduce waste and improve service in year one. In year one we also reduced the service charge by seven percent. Our focused approach means we have kept our eye on the ball and have continued as we started: saving energy and reducing costs through upgraded lighting, saving costs and maintaining standards by retendering the services, and linking marketing spend with retail sales figures to demonstrate ROI to retailers.

The stories we love the most though are not necessarily the cost savings, it’s the growth we have been able to support.

Meet Paula, we’ve known her for years.

Paula runs Lily’s Cards. Along with the rest of her colleagues, she was going to lose her job when the shop she worked in failed. She was ambitious and enthusiastic. So we held Paula’s hand and helped her learn retail and learn business.

She’s been running the shop since 2012 and is one of the centre’s favourites. We have also helped other businesses grow. A move from market stall to retail shop front can be daunting. It can also be a financial challenge. But we identified two businesses we thought would bring an interesting offer to Idlewells. We agreed a steadily increasing operational cost model with both to enable them to establish a business built on solid foundations. This was in 2014. They are both trading their socks off today and are just two of the retailers helping us score an amazing 100% in our latest retailer satisfaction survey.

Today, Idlewells has a different owner. But we are still its property managers, focused on making the centred the best it can be.

Being focused is not only about cost reduction, it’s about paying attention to the little things; spotting ambition and assessing its potential, knowing the community and what new shops they would go for, or meeting with each retailer to ‘micro-review’ their feedback with us. We think we are pretty close to achieving our aim of brilliance when it comes to being focused on what we do.