Shopping
Mall Owners, Retailers Clash on Avalanche of Online Returns
- Simon CEO says some tenants are taking returns out of sales
- Any hit to malls’ sales-per-square-foot metric is bad news
Mall owners, already squeezed by e-commerce and spending billions on property makeovers to draw shoppers, have a new headache: retailers deducting returns for items bought online from their sales figures.
David Simon, chief executive officer of Simon Property Group Inc., says a “significant number” of tenants are underreporting sales and that the company, the largest U.S. mall owner, is negotiating with them to find a solution.