On a Mall Mission

Alyona Kharchenko thinks it will take her a week to summarize what she learned on her three-day visit to Fashion Square.

For most Southern Californians the mall is just another place to buy gifts, hang out with friends and troll for shoes, but for the 24-year-old Ukrainian businesswoman the mall was an education.

At home in Sebastopol, in the Crimea--the often-embattled area of Ukraine that protrudes into the Black Sea--Kharchenko is the assistant manager of an open-air market with more than 60 vendors. But for the last month, Kharchenko has been in Los Angeles studying that peculiarly American institution--the shopping mall.

Besides the Sherman Oaks mall, she has seen several downtown shopping centers and Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. The market that Kharchenko helps manage is more like a Middle Eastern souk or bazaar than a typical Southland mall.

As she explained in Sherman Oaks this month, her market features stalls that sell flowers, clothing, convenience foods and other items as well as several coffee shops and a place that offers shoe repairs. None of the stalls is as large as Z Gallerie, Pottery Barn, See’s candy or any of the other 115 shops and two department stores in Fashion Square, she said.

Kharchenko is one of 10 Ukrainian managers and business owners who have spent a month in the Los Angeles area under the auspices of Community Connections, a program sponsored by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Administered by the nonprofit International Visitors Council of Los Angeles, the program brings businesspeople from the former Soviet Union together with local businesses.

According to Janet Elliott, executive director of the Visitors Council, the economic situation in Ukraine is “dire, and this program allows them to learn about a free-market economy.”

More than 5,000 entrepreneurs and other businesspeople from former Soviet countries have participated since the project began in 1993, she said.

Ochakovsky Ltd., the company Kharchenko works for, has ambitious plans to build a large indoor mall with department stores, supermarkets and boutiques. But its current operation lacks the sleek, coordinated look of the San Fernando Valley mall, she said. Each tenant encloses his or her space with tent fabric, wood or whatever material the vendor can afford.

“It depends on the tenant,” she said. “They do whatever they can do. We are not involved in the design.”

Working with merchants to coordinate the design of their spaces, as the Fashion Square management does, is one of the innovations she’d like to take home to Sebastopol, a city of almost 400,000 people.

“I’d like them to negotiate their design with us,” said Kharchenko, who speaks Russian and Turkish as well as English. More consistent, pleasing design would attract more customers, she said.

Kharchenko speaks faster and faster as she describes what she’s learned and how those lessons can be applied to her market back home. She saw many elements at the Valley mall that she would like to incorporate into her business. “I’ll adjust them to our economic reality,” she said. That reality includes uncertain water and power service.

While many visitors never notice the canned music that fills the Sherman Oaks mall, she likes it and thinks music should be part of the market experience at home.

“It makes you want to stay here longer and longer,” she said.

She also noted the wide variety of goods for sale locally. “Most of the things we have in our mall are for teenagers and young people,” she said, explaining that younger Ukrainians tend to have more disposable income than older ones, many of whom depend on unreliable state pensions. At home, she said, good jobs are scarce and many ambitious younger people start their own businesses.

The many ways American malls lure shoppers intrigue her. Fashion Square has a Macy’s at its eastern end and a Bloomingdale’s at its western end. Such major department stores are known in the mall trade as anchors.

“I think it’s a good idea,” she said. “We don’t have any anchors to attract people.”

Visions of better marketing dance in Kharchenko’s head. One of her responsibilities at home is negotiating leases with tenants. Stores that lease space in the Sherman Oaks mall agree to contribute a set amount to advertise the mall as a whole. In turn, they are guaranteed mention in some mallwide ads. She wants to modify her current leasing agreement to create such a marketwide advertising fund.

Shana Yao, the marketing director for the Sherman Oaks mall, said Kharchenko seemed excited by its e-mail marketing program. Yao explained that customers sign up and are contacted electronically about sales and other events that might interest them.

“They don’t have anything like that,” Yao said.

Kharchenko also liked the idea of “Muffin Monday.” As Yao explained, on the first Monday of every month, the mall delivers free muffins and coffee to all its vendors and their employees.

“It helps us stay in good communication with them,” Yao said.

Kharchenko pointed out that the Crimea region is increasingly attractive to tourists. The Black Sea was a favorite seaside resort during the Soviet period, and it continues to draw vacationers from the former Soviet Union.

The area also attracts many British tourists who come to visit sites important in the Crimean War of 1853-56. Sebastopol, held by the forces of the czar, was besieged by British and other troops. And her city is not far from Balaklava, where the British Light Brigade made its suicidal attack on the Russians, immortalized in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

Kharchenko would like to see more gift shops in her market and its covered successor that cater to foreign tourists with improved service and more attractive souvenirs. Currently, she said, carved wooden objects made by local artisans are popular, but she believes much more could be offered to appeal to non-Ukrainian visitors.

Kharchenko, who stayed with a family in Brentwood for part of her visit, said she knew she was lucky to be in Southern California, especially this time of year.

“What is most fascinating here,” she said, “is the mix of people, the mix of cultures. It’s very unusual and attractive.”

At home, she explained, there are only a handful of ethnic minorities, including Tatars, Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

She was also astonished by the lack of public transportation.

“If you haven’t got a car here, you can’t do anything,” she said.