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Shopping Centers Today -> September 2006
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WOMEN'S BUSINESS
Females carve a niche in Latin America’s mall industry
By María Bird Picó
When Irene Abramovits started out eight years ago, she was one of just a handful of female executives working in Venezuela’s shopping mall industry. “Since then, I have seen many other women holding other positions in this industry besides the traditional ones in marketing,” she said. With a degree in sociology and urbanism, she spent two decades developing mostly office buildings at the Caracas-based Organización NSM.
But for the past eight years Abramovits has focused on the company’s two malls, Centro Comercial El Recreo and Galería El Recreo, both in Caracas, working in the company’s real estate, legal and customer service divisions. “The problem was not that women were not offered jobs, but that we were not paying attention to this industry, as well as others, as a source for management jobs.”
Her background in sociology comes in handy, she says, when tenants and shoppers seek advice on strategy.
Women account for 40 percent of Latin America’s urban workforce, according to the United Nations’ International Labour Organization, and in few sectors are they represented more heavily than in retail real estate. Women occupy about 30 percent of the professional and management positions, below the U.S. (45.9 percent) but higher than Japan (8.9 percent), the world’s second-largest economy.
Consequently, the placement of women in management positions in retail real estate no longer raises eyebrows as more of them have been recruited over the past decade, a period of great growth in the region’s mall industry. And that’s just as it should be, some say, arguing that women’s intuition and love of retail make them ideally suited for a career in the mall business.
“Women have an innate retail intuition,” said Marlyn Mollá, retail manager at Peru-based Inversiones Castelar SAC — a company she owns with her husband, Ramón — which, in turn, owns the eight-year-old Sur Plaza Boulevard, a mall in the city of Asia, a popular beach resort. “All shopping center studies reveal women play an important role in retail purchasing decisions.”
Here follow profiles of a handful of those women who are part of the industry’s backbone.
Sandra Tenorio, general manager of Jardín Plaza Shopping, a 255-store mall in Cali, Colombia, says her career is a love affair rather than a job. “I have been working with malls during the past 14 years, and I cannot see myself in any other industry,” said Tenorio. “I love it because I am producing adrenaline at a 100 percent rate, nonstop. I also love the endless stream of events, the contact with the shoppers and tenants and being able to see the evolution of a project from blueprints to a successful mall.”
When Tenorio graduated a quarter of a century ago with a degree in business administration and marketing, malls were not on her professional radar. She started working in the telecommunications field but jumped to a housing development company and then to a company that owned a mall.
The owners of Jardín Plaza Shopping hired her to undertake what in Colombia seemed an impossible task: leasing the mall to tenants in a country that has long favored condominium malls.
Jacqueline Lopes applied for a position as marketing director of Brazil-based Grupo Multiplan five years ago as the only female candidate — and the only one with no retail experience.
“It was my experience — survey and planning know-how — combined with a sharp intuition that won me the job,” said Lopes, who was Multiplan’s only female manager five years ago. “This is among the most dynamic, interesting and pleasurable work I have ever done,” she said. “I must remain constantly up-to-date; the pressures from the company and the market are tremendous, but worth it.”
Lopes originally studied to be a pharmacist, went on to specialize in marketing and is now pursuing a master’s in business management. She believes this educational background and her experiences living in several Brazilian states fit perfectly into her job. “That leads me to treat a shopping center not as a real estate cash register that simply produces rents but as a brand that requires positioning, focus and a specific growth strategy,” Lopes said. “This without overlooking the customer, the target of numerous surveys, or the storeowners, which require special attention so they continue to believe in the shopping center’s name and secure the return on their investments.”
Lopes coordinated Cirque du Soleil’s first performance in Brazil, which will take place this October to mark the 25th anniversary of the opening of BarraShopping, in Rio de Janeiro, which Lopes says is now Brazil’s biggest mall, with 557 stores.
The industry has been good to Maryssa de Urbina, of El Salvador. She started out 18 years ago as a secretary at Grupo de Sola, a San Salvador-based company that sells land for residential development. While pursuing a degree in business administration, she moved up to sales executive. From there she talked company executives into building a shopping center in Santa Tecla, on the outskirts of San Salvador. De Urbina had conducted a market survey that showed a shopping center was needed in the area. That center, Plaza Merliot, opened 11 years ago and now boasts 305,000 square feet (28,348 square meters) of retail space. For the past 10 years, de Urbina has been the mall’s retail manager.
“The best part of this job is the relationships you build with clients,” said de Urbina. “I have had clients who were clueless to what type of shop they should open in our mall and trusted my recommendations.”
Larcomar, an entertainment-retail mall in Lima, Peru, was looking for a marketing executive three years ago. Karina Meier Zender did not hesitate to apply, intrigued by the prospect of working for what is considered a hot new industry in Peru. A year later she became the marketing and retail manager of the center that houses under one roof theaters, cinemas, discotheques, restaurants, bars, stores and a food court.
“Men and women attain positions based on their track record and have equal opportunities to move on,” said Meier. “But I do believe that when it comes to retailing, women bring a plus to the job, as they can be more sensitive, sensorial and visionary.”
The mall industry is demanding and constantly throws out new challenges, says Claudia Campos. She is general manager of Inversiones Simco, a commercial and retail development firm in El Salvador with a portfolio of eight open-air centers and one mall, the San Salvador based-Centro Comercial Galerías. “Each day is different from the previous one,” she said. “There are many opportunities to learn and research every single day.”
A former residential and commercial real estate broker, Campos was hired five years ago to take charge of retail leasing at Centro Comercial Galerías. She has since witnessed more women attaining management positions in El Salvador and elsewhere.
“Latin American women are moving into all sectors step by step,” she said. “We just elected our first female San Salvador mayor.”
Eighteen years ago few people were interested in the job of managing the troubled Plaza San Miguel, Peru’s first mall. Magaly Capurro applied.
“Owing to the country’s political and financial situation, the mall was stagnant during its first 10 years and was losing money,” said Capurro, whose academic background is in accounting and auditing. “It took me five years to turn its fortunes around.”
The 592,000-square-foot (55,000-square-meter) Plaza San Miguel is owned by Peru’s Catholic University. But Capurro was eager to get back to work after taking a break to raise her family. “It was a disastrous time, since the laws back then favored renters,” said Capurro. “Rents were low and frozen, and we did not have the legal power to kick out deadbeats. To boot, the tenant mix was poor, and the mall lacked operating regulations. It was total chaos.”
Thanks to her tenacity and to the passage of legislation more favorable to landlords, Capurro says, she managed to transform the mall into a successful, fully leased property able to compete with the shopping centers that subsequently opened in Lima. “I went out to sell the mall, and some retailers believed in me and decided to set up shop there,” Capurro said.
She says she recognizes that there are many talented men in the shopping center industry but that women give a special touch. “For many women in this business, malls are not only an income-generating business, but a hobby into which you can inject your feelings and passion.”
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