Exclusive: Simon Rebrands and Revamps E-commerce Site With Large Sale-priced Assortment
David Moin
7 min read
Simon, the nation’s largest owner and operator of shopping, dining, entertainment and mixed-use destinations, has revamped its e-commerce website for a much broader selection of sale priced items.
Simon’s website is now called ShopSimon, which replaces Shop Premium Outlets. The expanded and rebranded digital marketplace will include on-sale and discounted merchandise, while continuing to offer outlet products from brands. The old website offered only products from Simon’s network of outlets around the country.
Officials from Simon described ShopSimon as providing “a single, comprehensive source of premium and luxury sale-priced products.” They said the selection currently is comprised of more than 360 retailers, including American Eagle, Cole Haan, Adidas, Etro, Hugo Boss, MCM, Puma, Steve Madden and Tod’s.
“We have new deals and new products coming on daily,” said Neel Grover, chief executive officer of ShopSimon, and previously CEO of Shop Premium Outlets. “It’s always refreshed with new inventory and new promotions for consumers to find great products.”
“We do have some multibrand retailers coming on. Stay tuned for that,” said Lee Sterling, Simon’s chief marketing officer.
The officials emphasized that ShopSimon enables brands to get more “eyeballs” on discounted and marked-down merchandise, and open up space on their selling floors and on their websites to display a greater amount of fresh, full-price merchandise, while reducing the number of items that have been marked down. ShopSimon can be found on shopsimon.com and via the ShopSimon app.
They also said creating ShopSimon stemmed from Shop Premium Outlets’ “phenomenal growth” since it was launched in 2019. In the past few years, outlet centers, off-price and value retailers have been generating greater traffic and outperforming traditional, full-price and upscale retail destinations.
“We are now advancing from just focusing on outlet product to more on-sale product. When certain brands have their products on sale, we will have those same products on sale on ShopSimon,” Grover said. “But a lot of brands are also looking to move their sale product off their website to not cannibalize their full price, and leverage the Simon reach, which is vast.
“We become their sales tab, in essence,” Grover said. “We are a collection of hundreds of brand sales tabs in one location. We are getting more and more great product that our consumers want. Consumers love the outlet product. They love value more than ever. And the retailers have asked us to help them sell additional product. They want additional eyeballs” on the products they’re putting on sale.
“We have been working on ShopSimon for some time,” he added. “We have a very experienced and robust technology team” that has been involved in building and running other marketplaces for years. The ShopSimon marketplace, however, is “definitely the most robust,” Grover said. In addition, the team has launched AI technologies, built in-house, to help on search and other functions.
Simon will collect commissions based on sales generated on ShopSimon. “Given the rising cost of customer acquisition, we are only charging brands when we drive a sale,” Grover said. “On a lot of other [marketplaces], brands pay for an ad, for a click, for an eyeball, whether they drive a sale or not. With us, they can get a lot of awareness and only pay when we drive a sale.
“Many retailers didn’t have their outlet product digitalized before. It wasn’t enabled for online sales,” Grover observed. “Now that we are expanding to enable on-sale product, we are able to add a lot more inventory.”
Asked if it’s more difficult to operate a website for on sale or off-price goods compared to a regular priced website, Grover replied, “When it’s full price across the board, it is a little easier. This is more difficult because of the transient nature of the product.
“Every brand has different feelings on how much they want to be promoted when it’s off-price. Some of our brands don’t want to be mentioned in any of our emails or digital marketing. Then there are others asking for as much promotion and visibility as we can provide,” he added.
“By seamlessly integrating the ease and portability of online shopping with the appeal of our nationwide network of top tier malls and premium outlets, Simon is creating the standard for a truly integrated omnichannel experience,” David Simon, chairman, CEO and president of Simon, said in a statement. “Inherent in our culture is a drive for innovation and a desire to enhance the shopping experience for our consumers while delivering new sales opportunities for our retailers. ShopSimon is yet another example of how we are bringing the retail ecosystem together to deliver more of what today’s discerning shopper wants.”
According to the Simon executives, ShopSimon, through its enhanced digital capabilities, makes it easier to post, promote and sell merchandise all in a “brand-safe” digital environment where retailers can collaborate on how they are presented and marketed. Retailers, according to Simon, have full control over their product assortment, pricing and marketing, and can pulse products on and off as inventory dictates, and align their offerings with “a carefully cultivated premium and luxury marketplace.” The technology also provides custom virtual storefronts, and new sales and traffic data, and insights into consumer preferences and behaviors. Also, shoppers can search by image or color, view similar items recommended from their search, and experience personalization to guide them through the choices.
“We work with each brand uniquely and give them what’s best for them,” Grover contended. “Some partners want their product on 24/7. Some brands want to take it off when we are done with the season and wait a month or two before putting more product on. We have incredible flexibility. We do it in a brand-safe environment. It’s really like a shop-in-shop experience. They have their own branded experience. They control the imagery. They control the pricing. They control how we message them, where we message them.
“In all cases we share a lot of data with the brands.…I’ve been in marketplaces for over 20 years, but we partner deeper than any other marketplace out there,” Grover said. “We look at ourselves as an extension of the brand’s own website. For brands that want to focus on full price for the consumer, let us be that off-price sale tab for you. They can leverage Simon’s vast network of consumers and traffic. Simon has over 2 billion in-person shopper visits and over 150 million website visits, annually. Brands get to leverage those eyeballs, that foot traffic, driving more brand awareness and more sales. In some cases, we are driving consumers back into the stores. We give a lot of insights that help them with conversion metrics, what’s selling, what’s not selling, what we see going on with different price points.”
Asked if Simon would consider selling full price on e-commerce, Sterling replied, “We see value as the immediate opportunity and void in the marketplace right now, but you never know what the future holds. Simon is constantly innovating. We are constantly listening to our shoppers and we are also listening to our brands. When we put all those together, we will see what the future holds.
“This is yet another example of how Simon continues to maximize today’s rapidly changing consumer preferences to drive loyalty and sales for retailers,” Sterling said. “By enhancing nearly every aspect of the experience, we are creating greater convenience for consumers and bringing more people to our properties to shop, eat, stay and play.”
