Comment: UK retailers can find success trading overseas

Years ago, when collecting a car at Lisbon Airport, I was booked in by Avis as Marco Polo. They were sad to learn I was only visiting the Algarve. But this has proved a prescient misnomer, for my retail explorations have since gone increasingly global.

For the past four weeks I’ve travelled around the world: Hong Kong, Australia and the Americas, South and North.

It’s been fascinating to note how former flags of empire have transmuted into compatriot retail fascias.

British brands, for example, clearly feel more at home in former colonies and fellow Commonwealth countries than in South America. This stronghold of Latin explorers 500 years ago is the fiefdom of Latin retailers today; other European fascias are far less evident. (North American brands are also widespread, of course, for cultural and geographic reasons.)

French and Spanish retailers in particular have followed in the Latin explorers’ wake; Carrefour, Casino, Inditex and Mango are the Magellans and Vasco da Gamas of our age.

A week’s visit to Chile, Peru and Colombia revealed a host of other familiar fascias from southern Europe: Women’Secret, Springfield, Custo, Chevignon and Celio for example. There was a sprinkling of British brands - Lush and Laura Ashley in Santiago; Austin Reed c/o Villa Romana in Bogota; Superdry in Medellin - but only Mothercare had any prominence.

The greatest revelation was the dynamism of the ethnic retail brands. Through the mall experience, as well as the ‘four-wall’ experience, these retailers of the perversely dubbed New World are industry-leading players on any good old benchmark.

Go revel in the malls of Jockey Plaza in Lima or El Tesoro in Medellín. And in the latter enjoy the apparel stores of the Colombian chain Tennis - which melds All Saints and Superdry and serves them both an ace - or of the Argentinian chain La Martina whose 32 stores in South America and 24 in the US/EMEA show up most other so-called Polo outfitters for the impostors they are.

Excessive attention on Brazil has wrongly overshadowed other South American markets, notably those of the newly formed Alianza del Pacífico - Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

Activity in this region across all retail formats - department stores, hypermarkets, specialty multiples - shows levels of execution that put many well-known European groups to shame, equalled by unusually successful cross-border expansion strategies.

Nobody seems to have told Falabella or Ripley that full-scale department stores are supposed to stay within national borders. Nor has anyone told Éxito that the hypermarket belongs to yesterday. The stores operated by the number one player in Colombia (part of Groupe Casino) are vibrant examples of how powerful this format still can be: a compelling food offer and the best multi-branded, designer-endorsed clothing ranges I’ve ever seen in a hypermarket.

We’ve entered a new Age of Discovery. Although many channels of navigation are more ethereal than maritime, treasures still await adventurous retailers in foreign lands. And they might just start coming in the opposite direction.

• Michael Poynor Managing Director, Retail Expertise