ECE’s “Digital Mall” wins “Best O2O Strategy” award and its Managing Director Klaus Striebich receives “Industry Achievement Award” at the MAPIC 2017

Award ceremony (in the picture: Joanna Fisher, ECE Managing Director Center Management, Klaus Striebich, ECE Managing Director Leasing)

MAPIC 2017: “Digital Mall” wins “Best O2O Strategy” award / Klaus Striebich honored with “Industry Achievement Award”

HAMBURG, 20-Nov-2017 — /EuropaWire/ — On Thursday night, ECE received two MAPIC awards on Europe’s premier event for the international retail real estate market MAPIC 2017 in Cannes. The “Digital Mall”, the first product search feature of a shopping center in Germany, received the award in the “Best O2O Strategy” (Online to offline) category. In addition, Klaus Striebich, ECE’s Managing Director Leasing, received the “Industry Achievement Award” for being an outstanding personality of the retail industry.

“We are very pleased to receive these renowned awards,” said Alexander Otto, CEO of ECE. “Receiving the award for the ‘Digital Mall’ shows that we are on the right track in providing our customers with a true omnichannel experience and thereby efficiently connecting both online and offline. Personally, I’m also very happy for Klaus receiving the “Industry Achievement Award” award. He has not only done a great job for ECE in the past 25 years but also for the entire industry. He greatly deserves this accolade.”

Since December 2016, the “Digital Mall” has been available on the website of Alstertal-Einkaufszentrum in Hamburg on www.produkte.alstertal-einkaufszentrum.de. Customers can experience and browse the product variety of 23 participating shops including Saturn, Christ, Hunkemöller, Gant, Görtz, Brax or Clas Ohlson, and reserve products to buy them later in the store. Currently, there are 120,000 products to choose from and the products of ten further retailers are in the process of being added. In the first ten months since the launch, the website had 100,000 visits and the pages had more than 300,000 hits. The “Digital Mall” is planned to be rolled out at more German centers in 2018.

With the “Digital Mall”, ECE meets the desires of many customers for a holistic, omnichannel shopping experience. In addition, the company eliminates a disadvantage of the brick-and-mortar retail: Before purchasing, the customers can now find out, from their homes or while on the go, whether a desired product from a specific brand is available in the shopping center in the preferred color and the right size and at which shop it can be found. As far as ECE is aware, no other German shopping center is currently offering a service of this kind.
ECE’s innovative services also include the “Love to Shop” app, ticketless and cashless parking using the “Easy to Park” card, the Selfie Photo Box, the 3D-Wayfinder or the digital playgrounds called “Kids Planet”. These are developed at ECE’s Future Labs, which were set up to develop a faster, more convenient and exciting shopping experience for customers at ECE-managed centers.

Klaus Striebich receives “Industry Achievement Award”

During the award ceremony at Palais des Festivals, Reed MIDEM, organizer of MAPIC, honored Klaus Striebich with the “Industry Achievement Award” for being an outstanding and respected personality of the industry. 50-year old Klaus Striebich will retire from his post as Managing Director Leasing at ECE for personal reasons at the end of the year. Klaus Striebich, who was born in Adelsheim / Odenwald (south Germany) in 1967, has been heading ECE’s Leasing division as Managing Director since 2003. He joined the company as a Leasing Manager in 1992, he became the youngest Regional Manager in the history of the company in 1998, and was appointed Deputy Managing Director in 2001. Furthermore, he has been Chairman of the German Council of Shopping Centers for a long time. He will be succeeded by Steffen Friedlein, who, in his position of Senior Director National, has been responsible for the leasing of the centers in Germany.

About ECE
ECE was founded in 1965 by mail-order company pioneer Werner Otto (1909-2011). It is still owned by the Otto family and is managed by Alexander Otto, CEO of ECE. As a specialist in commercial real estate, ECE provides all services related to properties from one source and creates a clear added value for its customers, partners, and clients by bundling its entire expertise. The market value of the properties managed by ECE (assets under management) currently amounts to 33.4 billion euros. With 199 shopping centers under its management (53 of which are under the management of MEC METRO-ECE Center management GmbH & Co. KG) and activities in 12 countries, ECE is the European market leader in the shopping center industry. More than 4.3 million customers visit ECE centers every day, where approximately 21,000 retail renters generate an annual turnover of around 24 billion euros at all ECE centers combined, which have a total sales area of around 7.2 million square meters. As a further business segment, ECE develops, plans, and builds corporate headquarters, office buildings, industrial buildings, logistics centers, traffic properties, hotels and city quarters.

SOURCE: ECE Projektmanagement G.m.b.H. & Co. KG

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