THE retail arm of the Villar Group, All Value Holdings Corp., said it will open more branches of its existing brands, partly in the shopping-mall developments of its sister firm Vista Land & Lifescapes Inc. (VLL), which recently celebrated its 10th year as a publicly listed company with a special bell-ringing ceremony at the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE).
The property developer debuted at the PSE on June 25, 2007.
“Since its debut in the stock market, we have seen Vista Land further solidify its foothold in the real-estate space through its subsidiaries, which cater to different market segments,” PSE Chairman Jose T. Pardo said in his welcome remarks during the listing anniversary ceremony. “Given the sustained optimism on the real-estate sector, I am confident Vista Land will continue its growth trajectory and remain among the leading developers in the country.”
All Value Chairman Manuel B. Villar Jr. said the growth of their retail business will be paced by the completion of more shopping malls by VLL, although they are also putting up stand-alone outlets for All Day Convenience Stores and The Coffee Project.
“The prospects for our retail businesses are very good because I am very bullish about the Duterte administration,” Villar said, adding that the presence of their retail stores have also contributed to the success of Vista Land malls.
Over the years All Value, a privately held firm by the Villar family, was able to replace most of its key anchor tenants in Vista Land malls and also in the commercial areas of its subdivisions and buildings.
All Value’s retail chains currently include AllHome, a one-stop shop home depot; All Day brands that include supermarket, convenience stores, toy stores, and department stores; Bake My Day bakeshops; and The Coffee Project.
Villar said their retail business is meant to fill the needs of their residential communities and, as anchor tenant, also serves to set the quality benchmark for other tenants of Vista Malls and unit Starmalls Inc., which has its own stable of malls under the brand.
Villar said the Filipino’s lifestyle is improving and there is now demand for more upscale concepts because of rising per-capita income.
“I’m looking at a significant improvement in the lifestyle of Filipinos,” Villar said.
“Our home buyers have many needs. They need commercial centers, hotels, coffee shops and supermarkets. So it’s a matter of fill in the blanks at this time. We will fill up these needs as we expand our retail portfolio,” he added.
He said they intend to put up malls filled with All Value retail shops in the 200 cities and municipalities where there will be Vista Land residential projects over time.
The company typically starts the first phase of Vista Land’s new malls with AllHome as the anchor tenant before the other retail concepts come in during the second phase.
“AllHome is doing very well. Right now, there are only 13 branches. We paused for a while, but we are set to resume the opening of stores and we will ramp it to 25 by next year,” he said.
They paused in opening more stores because they had to expand existing ones due to higher demand for more products by both suppliers and consumers, he added.
“We’re very bullish with coffee. We’re going to expand The Coffee Project. It’s a very successful venture and we want to expand very quickly,” he added.
“We can sprinkle our developments with Coffee Project because we have communities all over the country. We will end the year with only 25 branches, but next year, we hope to double it to 50. And we’ll be coming up with a very aggressive growth rate,” he added.
Villar said they only have three branches of the department store as it is still a new concept, but the plan is to open one branch in every Vista Mall.
Its supermarket venture has four branches and they are putting up another six this year, Villar said.