Opening a store on one of the world’s most renowned shopping streets comes with an enormous rent burden every year.
That burden is getting worse in many places, with rents increasing on 35 percent of the top 500 shopping streets worldwide during the past year, according to commercial real estate agency Cushman & Wakefield.
New York’s Upper 5th Avenue has the highest average rents of any shopping street worldwide, with a square foot of retail space coming to a whopping $3,500 every year.
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The shops in Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay area are also expensive for potential renters with a square foot of space on offer for about $2,400 per year.
It nearly goes without saying that a company will also need deep pockets to rent an outlet on the prestigious Champs-Élysées in Paris. A square foot of retail space on the French capital’s shopping mile would cost $1,372, slightly higher than London’s $1,321.
Tokyo and Seoul are much cheaper propositions for clients but the same amount of space in both cities still costs over $850.
There is a substantial gap to the last entry in the top 10, Vienna’s Kohlmarkt. Opening a shop there would set a business back $478 per square foot every year.
(Source: Forbes)