Creating value through integrated commercial strategy and design with Patrick Cox

We are consciously placing commercial strategy at the forefront of our design process. With the expansion of our Commercial Strategy and Advisory team in London and the Middle East, we’ve extended our reach to include aviation, hospitality, and retail and mixed-use developments around the world. As a team, our shared purpose is to leverage our clients’ opportunities by distilling their success criteria, responding with robust metric-based strategies, and collaborating with design teams and stakeholders to realise a common vision for success. 

What sets us apart is the depth of our offer and the seamless collaboration between commercial strategy and design. We look at who the development will attract, how people will use the space, what brands and tenants will be most appropriate, and how we can deliver both short-term wins and long-term value.

We take a bespoke approach, considering each project’s geographical and cultural context, catchment potential, and competitors, before developing a commercial strategy and design brief that delivers against a client’s success criteria. This holistic approach provides design teams with a detailed evidence-base to fully understand the visitors and occupiers the scheme will attract, as well as the format and budget that will create commercial success. It also affords them the opportunity to test design scenarios and validate investment logic before committing to a design.

Being able to prove the commerciality of a design from the outset – before the design has even been drawn – is incredibly beneficial to the process. The earlier commercial strategy is involved, the better we’re able to mitigate risk, manage expectations and refine what success looks like for any given project. Whether working with Benoy architects or external teams, early intervention means we can steer design teams in the right direction and channel their creativity and problem-solving expertise in the most effective way.

EcoWorld in Bangalore, India, is a case study which showcases the strength of our integrated commercial strategy and design offer. Our client Brookfield, a globally renowned developer and operator of a variety of formats worldwide, had bought a 14-building office campus housing a collection of major corporations. The existing scheme featured two levels of commercial provision across its ground and first floors, including a run-of-the-mill food court and an underutilised art gallery, plus an outdoor amphitheatre. Brookfield wanted to drive the commerciality of the of their asset and enhance staff amenities to ensure EcoWorld would remain a desirable place to work, ultimately enticing global companies to site their offices there.

We visited the site to understand how the scheme was being utilised and assessed the capacity to better engage existing and new audiences. We also evaluated the potential to improve turnover performance, taking into account developing consumer behaviour, occupier demand and increased competition. From there, we determined how the spaces could be best used and created a design brief for our architects to action. 

Happily, Brookfield welcomed a lot of our ideas, including relocating the food court and introducing a microbrewery and numerous restaurants. They also implemented our proposal to activate the first floor with pop-up retail, F&B, additional seating, and pergola planting and shading. 

Taking the surrounding area into account, we also saw the opportunity to leverage nearby residential communities and extend the operating hours of the restaurants from five days to seven. In turn, the client could let the space to a higher quality tenant, because we had the narrative and data to support it as a week-round – and year-round – prospect. Consequently, our guidance has enhanced commercial returns while establishing a vibrant mixed-use destination. 

One of our main objectives is to make sure that the advice we provide is relevant both today and into the future. Combining present-day metrics with detailed, site-specific forecasting enables us to create schemes that remain adaptable, resilient and valuable in the long term. Besides the obvious commercial benefits of creating places where people want to be and return to, the additional positives include mitigating waste and unnecessary redevelopment as well as supporting urban identities and communities. It’s a win for people, businesses and urban environments. 

Often, our work involves highlighting what hasn’t worked in the past and why, to ensure that mistakes aren’t repeated. Understanding human behaviour is essential to this, and fundamental to creating lasting value and meaningful commerciality. Our team of analysts investigate future-facing perspectives and behaviours, such as the impact of online retail, or how people spend their physical time – what gets them out of the house, whether by need or desire. 

This work is informed by our biannual consumer survey, which charts local behaviour and its differences between regions. We like to be pragmatic and proactive, so we’ve built bespoke models to observe supply and demand in key markets while, crucially, projecting that data forward over 10, 15 and 20 years to ascertain how dynamics will change and the impact this will have on different locations.

While data will play a vital role in Benoy’s future, it is the interpretation of that data – including simplifying it and making actionable recommendations – that sets us apart from others in the sector. We focus on the things that communities will need and the experiences they will invest in, from ultra-convenience on the doorstep to a wow-factor destination.

For further discussion, please contact: Patrick.​Cox@​benoy.​com