Main Cambridge retail vacation spot, Grand Arcade, has constructed upon an action-packed 2024 with a profitable festive season, drawing in 8.5% extra guests between 28 October and 22 December than in the identical interval final 12 months and with a peak of roughly 70,000 consumers by means of the doorways on Saturday 14 December; the most well-liked single day in 5 years. This stage of customer quantity development far outpaces the nationwide common, which averaged a 2.8% decline in footfall over the identical timeframe.
The festive flurry adopted a current string of {industry} and group awards, acknowledging Grand Arcade’s industry-leading advertising and marketing, environmental and group achievements.
Earlier in December, the Grand Arcade workforce obtained two prestigious awards from the nationwide commerce affiliation Revo; specializing in the centre’s groundbreaking ‘Let’s Go Round’ marketing campaign, and ‘Grand Discoveries’ programme. Launched in 2022, Let’s Go Round was the UK’s first buying centre marketing campaign geared toward selling the precept of the Round Financial system and has gone from energy to energy since.
With enter from 60 organisations, and internet hosting over 80 activations, ‘Let’s Go Round’ delivered over 800 hours of interactive content material – together with pop-ups specializing in re-using and re-loving classic clothes, occasions discussing the necessity to regenerate numerous wildlife habitats, and a ‘human library’ which supplied free and real recommendation to remodel buildings into an eco-home. There have been interactive video games to find out about local weather disaster and replicate on options, a round trend present in help to refugees, workshops to learn to restore your garments and stay demonstrations to keep away from meals waste.
Exterior of the Revo’s, ‘Let’s Go Round’ was additionally awarded the {industry}’s Inexperienced Apple Setting Awards’ Nationwide Gold & Nationwide Champion gongs and Cambridge Impartial Enterprise Awards’ Inexperienced Award in current weeks.
The awards had been the cherry on the cake of an enormous 12 months. Throughout the already well-occupied centre, a run of recent entrants opened in 2024. B-corp licensed, Rituals, one of many UK’s main high-end magnificence manufacturers, opened its new retailer in Could whereas Scamp & Dude, one other B-corp licensed enterprise born within the UK, opened its fifth retailer within the centre in July.
Additional increasing the centre’s in depth trend line-up, Past Retro – the pioneering classic and preloved clothes firm – joined the Grand Arcade in October offering two flooring of classic clothes and capitalising on the Metropolis’s massive pupil inhabitants. Then in November, Miele opened a devoted retailer right here, the model’s eighth “Miele Expertise Centre2 within the UK, which has change into an actual draw for purchasers.
And naturally, Everyman launched its first cinema in Cambridgeshire in November too, with a blockbuster occasion. Labelled Britian’s ‘bougiest new cinema’, Everyman’s high-end method to movie viewing features a choice of delectable cold and warm meals, a completely stocked bar, and entry to entry to varied membership choices – alongside 5 screens, and 328 velvet seats. This expertise, unfold over greater than 15,000 sq ft of the centre, continues to draw guests from throughout Cambridgeshire and the East of England.
Martin Macwhinnie, centre supervisor for Grand Arcade, commented: “To say it’s been an enormous 12 months for Grand Arcade is an understatement. The brand new arrivals we now have welcomed and the awards we now have obtained actually acknowledge the rising position Grand Arcade has performed on this group. The exchanges and interplay we now have loved by means of Let’s Go Round and Grand Discoveries programmes have been what has actually motivated us, and we now have been rewarded with extra visits from our consumers and our current record-breaking footfall – in opposition to a backdrop of lowered buying visits nationally. Cambridge actually has completed us proud, and we stay up for extra in 2025.”
