By Tania Phillips
Louise de Lissa has long wanted to manage a shopping centre but never did she dream it would be Rose City Shoppingworld – the centre that she tree changed to more than a decade ago.
After a period in a caretaker role at the centre Louise, the centre’s long-time Marketing Manager, has officially stepped into the large shoes left by the late long-standing centre manager Jason Gard.
Her experience in both marketing and retail management roles with McConaghy Shopping Centres and Westfield centres in Brisbane was considered invaluable by the McConaghy group to getting the job done in Warwick.
And while it’s long way from her first job out of university working at Twin Towns Services Club at Tweed Heads, it could be seen that each step in her career, from Twin Towns to Myers Pacific Fair at Broadbeach and on to three Westfields in Brisbane before taking on the Rose City marketing role 12 years ago, have all led her to this point.
“It’s been an interesting jump from what I was doing, marketing manager here for 12 years but it’s something I always wanted to do,” Louise explained.
She had believed she’d have to move to become a GM but with the sad passing of her long-time boss the position became available.
“The position became available, they went out and interviewed and went through a process and it was great because I was given the opportunity to do it now,” she said.
“It’s been few weeks now, I’ve been pretty much doing the job since last year but officially a couple of weeks.”
And coming at one of the busier times of year behind the scenes Louise has had to hit the ground running.
“It is good to finally take on the role with a fresh set of eyes and obviously we’ve got budgets and the end of the financial year coming up so we’ve been kind of busy trying to finalise some things around the centre,” she said.
“We’re trying to create a better standard and tidy up some things. so it’s been fairly hectic getting some of those maintenance type things done as well as trying to get on top of the budget and that sort of thing. So, it’s busy.
“I was working a part-time position before, I was pretty lucky I had a fairly flexible sort of job. I’d been doing a big role in Brisbane before moving to Warwick, moving here was a bit of a tree change. When I took on the role of marketing manager it was a bit of a part-time role which was great, it suited me and my lifestyle at the time.
“This is a fulltime role, I’m happy to be busy.”
Louise said while it’s longer hours and a new challenge it is everything she expected and something she is relishing.
“It is exactly what I have always wanted to do really,” she said.
“It’s more operational obviously and I’m learning so much about different parts of the centre. Being in a smaller team here I was fairly versed with most of the things. How the centre ran. So it’s just great now to be in charge of things I guess. I’m learning about air conditioning and security issues and all that types of interesting stuff, it’s a bit different to marketing.”
While it is different to marketing she believes that her nearly 20 years of marketing roles in shopping centres have actually prepared her well for the new role.
She said marketing strategies have changed a lot over the 20 years because of the use of social media more than anything.
“There was nothing like that really,” Louise said about the role when she started.
“We had some websites and emails and things like that but now we’ve got all those different platforms that we can utilise.
“It’s good that I’m aware of all that in the role of a centre manager as well because I can guide the marketing person here and we can keep everything fairly tight.
“It often does happen that way (that the marketing manager becomes the General Manager).
“It’s good, we get involved with the leasing side, basically you have to be on top of every little strand that happens in the centre and there are then professionals in our head office that look after those particular areas like leasing, like shop fit outs but then we have to liaise with all those different people. “You have a pretty broad knowledge of all those sort of things. Which you have to have in marketing too.
“I was fortunate to go through the redevelopment here too back in 2018 (when we finished it) it was a two year redevelopment. I went through all that at the time, so fairly knowledgeable about that too.”
So all of her background prepared her for the role and she was ready for this challenge.
“I’m so excited and I love coming to work,” Louise said.
“It’s been great and working with the stores – I know the retailers well and I think they’re confident that we can keep it going strongly.”
