MANILA – SM partners and tenants gathered together to celebrate SM Supermalls’ 30th year leading the retail industry through the first-ever SM Partners Summit. They were treated to a forward-looking conference for retail industry players and business owners that aims to provide practical and inspiring knowledge through discussions of new and innovative ways to elevate the customer experience into a memorable one. The two-day summit comprised of a Retail Summit forum and SM Partners Awards Night, and was held at the SMX Convention Center of the Mall of Asia Complex.
With the market’s adaptation to digital shopping, traditional retail businesses find it important to keep up with the consumers' growing needs and demands for shopping experience beyond the brick-and-mortar concept. To create a venue for deep discussion among retailers and business partners, SM leveraged on this big idea for the forum “Bricks Click: Creating the New Marketplace.”
Invited retailers and tenants had the opportunity to gain insights from esteemed guest speakers including entrepreneur and inspirational speaker Francis Kong, Disney Institute regional business development manager Wing-Hoe Tan, and Samsung Electronics vice president for online David Kang. Panel discussions further elaborated the topics, with executives and veterans of known companies such as Samsung, Max’s, McDonald’s and Google contributing their insights and business experiences.
Kong explained that a business should learn to utilize social media and technology not to compete with the traditional way of retail, but to enhance and further develop its reach. Technology, according to Kong, is not the competitor of traditional retail, but its complement.
