Taking on the big boys fair and square

LEITH’S dockside shopping complex Ocean Terminal, after a faltering start following its £70 million launch in October 2001, is now going from strength to strength.

The 200,000 square feet development, designed by the founder of the Habitat empire, Sir Terence Conran, opened with only half of its units trading, but now houses more than 60 shops and is still growing.

A new addition, Molly’s Play Care Centre, is opening today which will be a draw for harassed parents wanting to get some shopping done, and a new branch of Monsoon’s Accessorise store is due to open in March.

Retail staples such as Marks & Spencer, Boots, Debenhams and Bhs have been established there for some time now and the mall’s future appears assured.

As more and more houses are built in Leith as part of the regeneration of the area, the local population is increasing, giving Ocean Terminal a greater customer base.

But even when the centre was facing a more uncertain future, it allowed small businesses the flexibility to take off, and the range of locally-owned firms, along with events and exhibitions, helps the centre to retain some character, despite housing so many high street chains.

Local businesses include eastern furniture stockist Kylan and ethical design retailer Earth Squared. The centre also hosts growing Scottish businesses such as Kshocolât and family-owned Baxters.

Alison Holt, the founder of Earth Squared, says that Ocean Terminal provided an excellent and supportive environment when she was starting out.

The firm, which specialises in "stylish but ethically-minded home interiors and accessories", opened in the centre back in October 2002.

Since then, turnover at the store has doubled and the business is now generating a five-figure profit.

As well as the concession in Ocean Terminal, Ms Holt opened a store in Glasgow’s Princes Square shopping centre for three months over the Christmas period in 2003 (the space was available to rent between two long-term leases).

She says that operating quite a large store there, with six staff, was good experience and means she now feels ready to open a full-sized shop in the centre of Edinburgh - possible locations include Rose Street or Victoria Street.

Looking back, Ms Holt says: "We approached Ocean Terminal because we noticed they had small, ready-fitted-out units, and initially took out a short three-term lease just to see how it went."

The space did not carry the rent of a full-sized shop, but gave the company an opportunity to build up its profile. "We were pleasantly surprised at the response that we got, so we decided to stay there at Ocean Terminal," adds Ms Holt.

"The centre management have been really good because they’ve allowed us the flexibility to change products and they gave us the time and space to be able to experiment and refine what we’ve been doing."

An online presence and attendance at numerous retail shows also helped the company to become known and to build up a following for its unique products.

Ms Holt decided to start the business after a stint working in IT left her feeling disillusioned with the dog-eat-dog corporate world. She took a couple of years out and worked at a voluntary project in Guatemala and there developed an interest in ethical production of goods.

On her return to Scotland, she decided there was a market for people who wanted design-oriented Fair Trade products, so she carried out six months of research, largely on the internet, to identify innovative quality products with an ethical dimension that she could bring to the high street.

She says the Ocean Terminal location has worked out well. The fact that her retail space is small, and open-fronted, as opposed to being a self-contained shop, made things easier as they got the business off the ground. Ms Holt puts this down to several factors. One is that Ocean Terminal is much busier than when it first opened, with most of its 85 retail spaces now occupied.

Another is that the shop, with its open front, gets a lot of passing trade.

She says that it has been a steep learning curve for her and her team regarding what sells and what doesn’t and that now they have a much better knack for choosing stock and displaying it well.

A loyal customer base, with people returning regularly and a focus on continually introducing new product lines, also contribute to Earth Squared’s success.

Any business dealing largely in Fair Trade goods has to watch its profits carefully as its margins are generally lower.

"Initially, when we first started the shop, we stocked purely Fair Trade products.

"To begin with Ocean Terminal wasn’t that busy, because it was still in its infancy and we really struggled in our first 12 months," says Ms Holt.

"What we do now is we promote Fair Trade products, but we also stock 20 per cent that aren’t classified as Fair Trade and that helps to support the other products that we have."

According to Ms Holt, one of Earth Squared’s aims when it started was to appeal to a wider market than just typical Fair Trade buyers.

She says she wanted "to make products appealing to people because of the design and quality. We didn’t want people to feel obliged to buy things."

Ms Holt points out that younger people moving into flats in the area and women aged between 45 and 55 are Earth Squared’s most frequent customers.

Highlights of the current collection include mother-of-pearl button bags, coloured silk quilts and bamboo vases and mirrors. Well-known department store chain John Lewis recently started stocking an array of similar products, including almost identical vases, so Earth Squared claims to be ahead of the trend.

Its products have featured twice on ITV’s 60 Minute Makeover programme, in which a viewer’s house has its interior design revamped in the space of an hour.

Ms Holt says that good relations with suppliers, many of whom are based in Vietnam, contribute to the shop’s success. Many products are designed by Earth Squared and the suppliers make products to their specifications.

"Last February we actually went out to Vietnam to meet our main supplier and also to visit the different producer groups and work with them on designs."

This is in order to make sure products come in contemporary colour and style ranges that will appeal to the maximum number of UK buyers.

It also means that many products are unique.

As well as the shop at Ocean Terminal, Earth Squared sells its range throughout the UK at home and interior retail shows such as Country Living - the company will be at the Country Living show at Ingliston this year.

Earth Squared also has a website incorporating an online store. Ms Holt says that the majority of the company’s sales are made at its Ocean Terminal concession or at retail shows, but emphasises that the development of the online shop and the website generally is a high priority.

Earth Squared is committed to - and very happy in - its Ocean Terminal location, Ms Holt says. The company has a long-term lease there and carried out a refit last year. It currently employs four staff at the store.

As for the future, Ms Holt says that Earth Squared is considering wholesale after a number of requests. The new city-centre store should open this year and long term the company aims to have a high street presence and expand to a chain.

It would be nice to think that Ocean Terminal, one of the Capital’s retail success stories, as well as hosting high-street chains, could actually have given birth to one.

No U-turn on mall's free parking pledge

LAST year, it was reported that Ocean Terminal would have to start imposing charges at its car park as part of a deal with the city council, as the number of shops opened in the centre passed an agreed threshold.

However, the charges never materialised. Ocean Terminal says free parking is one of its selling points and "there are no plans to change this in either the near or long-term future".

Free parking is good news for the centre, which has a 1600-space car park and, as of mid-2004, 120,000 customers each week.

Retail experts had expressed concerns charges would drive customers away from Ocean Terminal to destinations with free parking, such as Cameron Toll, The Gyle and Fort Kinnaird.

The charging agreement was supposed to be part of a drive to reduce the competitive advantage of out-of-town retail sites over shops in the centre of the city.

Future commercial plans for the area surrounding Ocean Terminal include a £25 million Asda superstore at the Western Harbour in Newhaven.

Property developer Gregor Shore’s luxury 452-flat development Platinum Point is currently being built on land mostly reclaimed from the Western Harbour in a project linked back to the removal of spoil from the Ocean Terminal site from 1999 to 2002.

Further along the waterfront, Granton is also a major regeneration location with an array of projects planned for the area. Barratt Homes is building 200 homes on the site of the old gasworks.