Rail Park Celebrates Five-Year Milestone

Dumisani Ncube | Monday October 24, 2016 15:15

Rail Park mall houses a number of retailers ranging from supermarkets, fast food outlets, saloons, pharmacies and clothing retailers. The mall is under the management of Khumo Properties Asset.

“Firstly it is important to have a full understanding of the retail industry in general, what the trends are, what makes the malls work, roles malls play in the society, locally and globally,” said Khumo Properties CEO Outule Bale, as he explained how the mall has managed to reach this stage.

He noted that the Rail Park mall has been keeping up in order to compete.

“Malls must at all times remain relevant in terms of diversity of offerings and the special experience customers must enjoy at each visit.

This is not an easy thing to achieve as customers are becoming more sophisticated and their needs are forever evolving,” he added.

As the management, Bale noted that they continually engage with tenants to get a sense of their trading densities so they detect and resolve problems before they manifest.

In the past years the Rail Park mall has gone on to create employment in different departments. “Rail Park Mall has contributed to over 2,000 employment opportunities from inception through to the upgrades it underwent in 2014 to the latest reconfigurations in 2016,” said Bale. 

Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Vincent Seretse was also present at the fifth anniversary celebrations of the Rail Park mall.

The Minister noted that by bringing modern and international brands, the presence of the Rail Park mall has helped reduce cross border spending and ensure revenue circulates within local borders to ignite economic activities.

“In time, and with our continuous engagements with multi-national brands here at the mall, there will be a good amount of skills transfer involving our people as far as the ability to run business is concerned. Moreover, it is government’s desire to see Batswana having meaningful roles in the ownership of such brands. Obviously, this calls for a balanced approach in ensuring that the businesses continue to make sense to original owners,” Seretse said.