“We wouldn’t even think of taking this on if we didn’t think we could be successful,” Jonathan De Mello tells me – with the confidence of a man who doesn’t really mind sticking his neck out.
The retail expert has been hired by Aberdeen Inspired to use his skills in their quest to revitalise the city centre.
The improvement group has received £40,000 from the council to bring in the heavy hitter with a reputation for bagging big brands.
Jonathan has more than 25 years experience transforming city centres at the helm of JDM Retail, and his track record speaks for itself.
But just how can he turn around the mood of doom and gloom in Aberdeen city centre?
The Press and Journal sat down with the retail boffin and heard from the man himself all about:
- How he sees so much potential in the Granite City
- Which British city he turned around – and how it could be a blueprint for Aberdeen
- And how he aims to bring the “biggest brands” to the north-east
Who is Jonathan De Mello?
The retail expert is exactly the type of man that Aberdeen Inspired were looking for when they became aware of the cash available.
The 49-year-old’s firm, JDM Retail, specialise in using data to figure out what sort of shops cities are missing.
Then they work with some of the country’s biggest brands to bring them in.
The high street saviour has worked with the likes of the Westfield group, which owns the UK’s biggest shopping centre in London, and helped turn around major cities such as Nottingham, Sheffield and Swansea.
He’s even appeared in national media as the go-to retail expert – including a recent Channel 5 documentary about the success of Lidl.
And thanks to a £39,000 cash injection from the council, Aberdeen Inspired can now enlist Jonathan’s services as they continue their city centre crusade…
How will Jonathan De Mello turn Aberdeen around?
It’s safe to say that Jonathan doesn’t have the simplest of tasks when it comes to turning around Aberdeen city centre.
More than one in five units on Union Street currently lay empty – with big brands deserting the high street in the past decade.
But whilst most may look at the Granite Mile and surrounding area with a hint of despair – the retail guru sees instead sees endless possibilities.
Explaining his process, Jonathan said: “What we’re doing is diagnosing the issues and then coming up with solutions to essentially say ‘we should look at the independent quarter or global fashion brands’, for example.
“What we want to do is take Aberdeen up the hierarchy locally, but also nationally as well.
“So really it’s just addressing the structural issues we’ve seen in the sector, the decline of the High Street, what we can do to change that and also looking at future-proofing the city through the new things that are coming in.”
‘Aberdeen has tons of potential – I can bring the big brands back’
Following his initial research into the Granite City, Jonathan was pleasantly surprised by what Aberdeen had to offer.
“Aberdeen is a great city from this perspective, it’s self-contained,” the Sunderland-born shopping specialist beamed.
He added: “The nightlife in Aberdeen is great for that. It’s not that people are going to go out to other cities because they’re so far away to enjoy themselves in the evening.
“More restaurants, more evening entertainment opportunities, I think that is key.
“There is an affluence here that is not in some of the cities that I’ve looked at.
“The likes of Sheffield and Swansea, they don’t have that level of affluent consumer that Aberdeen does.
“I’m working on Inverness and Stirling at the moment, they haven’t got a hope of getting the kind of brands that Aberdeen will be getting.”
How did Jonathan De Mello turn around Swansea?
Swansea in South Wales is quite similar in many ways to Aberdeen.
Both have a population of around 250,000, and both are quite well known as university cities.
Two years ago, Jonathan went into the Welsh city with the same goals as he has now in Aberdeen – turn the high street around.
Recounting his crusade down in the Gower Peninsula, he explains: “It was very similar to every other city around the UK.
“It had the same charity shops and discounters, but it didn’t have anything that screamed ‘this is Swansea, and this is what makes us different’, and that’s what we want to do.”
His plan was to capitalise on a thriving market which had been overlooked for too long in the Welsh city – students.
Groups of youngsters had previously taken the train through to Cardiff for shopping and nights out, with Swansea missing out on money from those with student loans to burn.
Can Jonathan De Mello help repurpose forgotten Aberdeen areas?
So just how was this lucrative demographic enticed to keep their money in Swansea?
“We repurposed areas that were just no longer needed,” Jonathan recalls.
“There is an area called Kingsway, which historically was a high street, but the vacancy rate there was around 40-50%.
“So we said that retail needed to go, because occupiers were voting with their feet, they didn’t want to be there.”
And following his report, the city has undergone a huge overhaul, with The Kingsway being given a major facelift – along with the empty Debenhams unit planned to be filled in a few months.
So can Jonathan replicate his Welsh wonders in Aberdeen?
Looking forward to the work ahead, the JDM chief executive is as confident as ever when it comes to his Aberdeen project.
“I think you’ve got strong potential to succeed here,” he grins.
What big brands would you like Jonathan to lure to Aberdeen? Let us know in our comments section below
He continued: “That’s why we want to take it on, because what we want to do from the strategy piece is diagnose the issues.
“Because we have the property agents and other services as well, we want to engage long term with the local authority and Aberdeen Inspired to actually deliver some of these occupiers to you.
“I’d say we have a high success rate in doing it elsewhere, so we can definitely do it here.
“I reckon we can make fairly material change in the space of six months to a year, in terms of at least signing some people up and coming up with a strategy.”
Read more:
Conversation