Interview: Mr. Ian Thomas, Chairman of Thomas Consultants

Thomas Consultants Inc. is a consulting firm that specializes in providing optimal retail development strategies for: Retail Projects and Shopping Centers; Downtown Retail Precincts; Resort Retailing and Master Planning; Airports and Cruise Ship Facilities, as well as Transit Nodes and other large-scale Mixed-Use Development.
Thomas Consultants‘ head office is based in Vancouver, Canada, with additional offices in both Korea and Australia. The firm is recognized as a leader in the strategic planning of retail facilities in a wide range of project types, including shopping centers, street retail districts, resort villages, master-planned communities, urban entertainment centers, airport and cruise ship terminals, and transit-oriented development projects.
The firm is currently engaged in major retail planning assignments in over 50 countries around the world. Through its international project exposure and Chairman Ian Thomas’ leading role in the International Council of Shopping Centers’ Annual International Design & Development Awards, the company has the ability to share global innovations and leading edge concepts with its clients. This allows its clients, who include the world’s leading shopping center developers, owners, operators and designers, to adopt the most current ideas and strategies and ensure success in their retail projects.
The company is also affiliated with Brisbane-based Foresight Partners, who specialize in economic and development advisory services in the Australia and New Zealand region. Its firms collaborate to provide clients specialized expertise and strategic input on a variety of real estate development issues.
Thomas Consultants has been instrumental in adding value to numerous key retail, entertainment, resort and mixed use projects around the world. Its input as Development Strategists is particularly relevant during the planning process, where the company ensures that such a development, with its key retail, entertainment and food/beverage elements, is not only truly matched to the market and so works optimally in practice, but also includes the points of difference that are critical for success in today’s competitive environment.
Identifying the most appropriate market niches, opportunities and sizing for these strategic elements is imperative. In addition, we take this strategic vision right down to a detailed tenant mix plan, as well as identifying the most appropriate retailers and operators for each of the project’s major components or zones. This creates a blueprint for guiding the leasing team in securing official interest from target retail, entertainment, and food & beverage tenants. Thomas Consultants are not agents, but work on a very complementary basis with most major leasing firms. Our exposure to leading edge developers (many are our clients) is instrumental in identifying new retail concepts and formats.
Mr. Ian Thomas, Chairman of Thomas Consultants, sits on the Board of Trustees of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC) and its Educational Foundation in New York. Through this vehicle the company has exposure and contact to a myriad of international retail operators, developers and investors. He also is the Chairman of ICSC’s International Design & Development Awards which evaluates and judges the world’s best new shopping centers. With this background and international network, the firm experiences leading edge ideas first hand.
In an exclusive interview, Ian Thomas noted that Korea is now a major focus for the firm. Thomas Consultants Korea is a major office where it employs a staff of approximately 20 professionals. Its client base is wide and varied and includes such major institutions as: Daewoo Motor Sales Co.; Doosan Construction; Dosi and Saram; GS Retail; Hyundai Corporation; Lotte Group; Samsung Group; Shinsegae Group; SK Group; and Taubman Asia.
At Thomas Consultants, we pride ourselves on creating unique strategies that assist our clients in realizing the greatest value from their development opportunity. By incorporating the latest principles in place making and master planning, we help the world’s leading developers, architects and urban planners craft innovative strategies that allow them to create unique points of difference necessary to thrive in today’s competitive environment,” he said.
He said the company realizes that the retail industry is in a constant state of transformation. New retail concepts are continually being introduced at a dizzying pace. Through its international exposure, the company is able to share the latest ideas and trends that are being introduced worldwide.
Undoubtedly one of the major changes in the retail industry is the diffusion of lifestyle concepts through the market. Open air lifestyle centers are rapidly being adopted on a global scale and their introduction has brought a major shift in consumer expectations. Thomas Consultants has been at the forefront of this change and today the vast majority of our work involves planning strategies for multi-purpose and mixed-use destinations.
We are actively engaged in assignments that propose new open air lifestyle centers, urban entertainment centers, downtown revitalization projects, mixed use town centers and transit oriented developments. The exposure to such a wide variety of project types, in both mature and emerging markets, enables us to leverage our expertise in creating living, breathing retail environments that are at the heart of livable and sustainable communities.”
Since the company’s inception over 30 years ago, it has continually been at the forefront of creating retail development strategies for recreational destinations. The resort retail industry has experienced a boom in recent years as developers are looking beyond residential property and recreational infrastructure development to diversify their revenue streams.
Thomas Consultants continues to push the boundaries on the resort front by helping our clients find innovative strategies that create truly special places. With a long list of leading beach, golf, and ski resort clients around the world, we have the experience and expertise to make your resort retail development stand the test of time,” he said.
In addition to its core consulting services, Thomas Consultants also has the ability to produce in-house marketing documents. These promotional documents empower our clients to maximize their new development’s exposure by communicating the key project highlights through a visually effective medium. Customized content including charts, tables and graphics can also be created and tailored to lend an extra degree of professionalism to the document.
Our tailored promotional documents are designed to efficiently communicate the development opportunity and have helped many of our clients attract prospective retailers and/or joint development partners.”
Through decades of research, the company has assembled an extensive library of research materials including project profiles on many of the leading retail centers around the world, he noted.
Speaking on the impact of the global economic crisis, he noted that the whole world has been affected by the financial meltdown. However, countries like the representing BRIC and Korea are quickly emerging from this crisis – in fact, several have come through almost unscathed. An excellent barometer is retail sales volume and with department store sales growing by almost 8% in the last quarter, it demonstrates the optimism and robust nature of the Korean consumer.
The shopping center industry has been around for 60 years. Tried and proven principles have emerged on how to develop a truly successful center. The world is rapidly globalizing, particularly accentuated by the expansion of major international retailers into new countries and sub-markets. As such, a global development platform is emerging. If Korea hopes to attract significant foreign direct investment, it must follow the global principles of development,” he said.
On the opportunities for Korea, he noted that the country is strategically located to participate in the overall boom occurring in the Asian region. With the exception of Japan, most Asian countries are enjoying strong growth, particularly China. Some of these economies have been somewhat self-contained, eg. India, but with greater prosperity occurring there is greater resulting fluidity as well. Korea has a real opportunity to participate in this upswing dynamic,” he said.

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Interview: Mr. Kim Sung-Hwan, Senior Secretary to the President for Foreign Affairs & National Security

The inauguration of Mr. Lee Myung-bak as President in February 2008 represented a significant shift in South Korea's foreign policy. Since then, the government has pursued a “pragmatic” foreign policy based on strengthening relationships with key regional powers and promoting conditional engagement with North Korea, while also enhancing South Korea’s role in the international community.

The seven point doctrine of the present administration can be characterized as: Complete denuclearization and opening of North Korea; Pragmatic diplomacy based on a national consensus; Strengthening of the ROK-U.S. alliance; Expansion of Asia diplomacy in partnership with other regional states to move toward the opening of an Asian era; Contribution to the global community as the world's 12th economy and a mature, responsible nation; Energy diplomacy to join the group of most advanced economic nations; and Cultural diplomacy to capitalize Korea's soft power through mutual opening and exchanges in the region and the world.

In an exclusive interview, Mr. Kim Sung-Hwan, Senior Secretary to the President for Foreign Affairs & National Security explained about the foreign policy orientation of the present government. Excerpts:

-The Lee Myung-bak administration is actively pursuing a foreign policy vision: “Global Korea”. In order to realize the vision, the administration has stepped up its efforts to contribute to global peace and prosperity with focus on easing financial difficulties, combating terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), climate change and other global challenges. Hosting a G20 summit in Seoul this November and strengthening its contributions to the international efforts to rebuild Haiti, Afghanistan and Iraq are good examples of the administration’s such efforts.

On North Korea, the administration is committed to building up mutual trust and common prosperity in inter-Korean relations through dialogues with a firm belief that the two Koreas should fully cooperate on a wide array of agenda including North Korea’s nuclear issue, not only on economic issues.

The Lee Myung-bak administration will continue to work with the international community to bear fruit in its efforts to advance the Global Korea vision built on what it has achieved.

-Despite the previous administrations’ efforts, as you pointed out,the inter-Korean relations did not see any significant improvement mainly due to the lack of North Korea’s cooperation. Particularly, the nuclear issue remains unresolved although the Republic of Korea, in cooperation with the international community, has tried to deal with the issue over the past two decades.

Considering this, the Lee Myung-bak administration places a top priority on the nuclear issues and persistently pursues the resolution of the issue through dialogues between the two Koreas and with other participating countries in the Six-Party Talks, which has been a main venue for negotiations. The administration’s initiative, the so-called “Grand Bargain”, is to address the nuclear issue in such a comprehensive way that North Korea will be able to get a broad range of benefits, ranging from economic assistance to security guarantee, once it makes a strategic decision to abandon its nuclear programs.

As President Lee puts it, peace has to be maintained to realize reconciliation and cooperation on the Korean Peninsula. The Republic of Korea and North Korea, as two directly involved parties of the Peninsula, should work together to address all pending issues, including the nuclear issue, through sincere and candid dialogue. The Lee administration will continue to seek ways to bring North Korea back to the dialogue table and to hammer out solutions on the pending issues in close cooperation and consultation with the international community.

-As the FTA provides a wider interface between the two sides, I am sure, the industries of Korea and Europe will be and must be more interconnected in all aspects of their activities. In additions, the FTA will also bring EU investors not only more opportunities but also better protection and effective safeguards. It is high time for EU investors to explore and expand their partnership with their counterparts in Korea. In case they should come across any room for further improvement, in terms of government regulations or local practices affecting transaction costs, any proposal or suggestion from business community is always welcomed by the Korean Government.

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Rascal, the ugliest dog in the world

Rascal won the title of ugliest dog Sunday at the 15th annual Ugly Dog Contest at the Del Mar Fairgrounds in California. His owner boasts that Rascal is the 'world's ugliest dog.'
I am sure my four dogs will love this video and laugh their heads off. Have to show it to them tonight!

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HP Slate takes on iPad

Even as I am excitedly waiting for the iPad to go on sale, i was caught unawares by the news that HP is ready with its own version of a tablet called Slate that will run Windows 7 operating system and support Flash. While the above videos that the company released looks promising, one will have to wait and see. I have never been a fan of the windows OS and am pretty sure that I will settle for the iPad. Just hope that the HP tablet does not keep crashing as frequently as the desktop/laptop versions!

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