Thailand’s Siam Piwat scoops honours at the World Retail Congress

Thai shopping centre operator receives accolades at World Retail Congress.

Thai retail developer Siam Piwat has scooped two retail industry awards at the World Retail Congress recently held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Siam Piwat is the owner and operator of several successful Thai retail developments, including Siam Paragon, Siam Center, and Siam Discovery, as well as the joint venture partner of IconSiam – the US$1.7 billion riverside landmark destination that opened in Bangkok last November.

Siam Piwat Group CEO Chadatip Chutrakul was inducted into the World Retail Hall of Fame by the World Retail Congress as one of the four new members selected in 2019.

The inductees were selected because their “ideas have shaped retailing through the businesses and brands they have created, or by their skills in running the retail industry’s giants, demonstrated clear vision, courage and determination to make their dreams a reality”.

The World Retail Hall of Fame was established in 2007 to honour the retail industry’s most innovative and influential representatives.

The World Retail Congress also awarded IconSiam, in which Siam Piwat Group is a joint venture partner, the top prize of Store Design of the Year 2019 as part of the annual World Retail Awards.

The Grand Jury of the World Retail Awards said IconSiam is “breathtaking in its scope and scale and takes retail design into the future”.

“Throughout 60 years, Siam Piwat has been a thought leader creating new prototypes and bringing new formats that have advanced the retail development sector in Thailand,” said Chutrakul. IconSiam shows that bricks and mortar still have a crucial part to play in successful retailing, and they are assets only waiting to be differently leveraged within a new paradigm. That new paradigm involves leveraging a very wide group of stakeholders by creating shared value for them all.”

According to Chutrakul, IconSiam, with a gross floor area of 750,000sqm made the creation of shared value into a “business sustainability” strategy to help the success of such a large-scale initiative that requires the collaboration of many different groups.

“Our achievements were made possible because of the collaboration and co-creation of our tenants and retailers,” she said. “The benefits created by IconSiam also go beyond our tenant partners to many different stakeholders at many different levels of society including artists, craftsmen, performers, small enterprises, the surrounding communities and even the city of Bangkok, too.

“For small businesses and artisans, we help them flourish and prosper by creating for them opportunities for new linkages, locally and globally; we help artisans, craftsmen or performers have a place on a globally visible stage to enhance the sustainability of their livelihoods, and we act as a platform that makes Thai values and all that is great about Thailand visible to the world.

“Also, in the SookSiam zone at IconSiam, you can see how it brings together hundreds of small, mom-and-pop operations from Thailand’s 77 provinces – people who have mostly never operated out of their hometowns but are now selling on a global platform.”

Chutrakul noted that “IconSiam has also had a transformative effect on the ChaoPhraya River. We acted as a catalyst for a multi-stakeholder collaboration that embraced riverside communities, hoteliers, river-transport operators, sites of historical and cultural importance, and government agencies, which is already helping to revitalise many districts around IconSiam.”

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