Swansea’s busy Quadrant Shopping Centre is to hold its first Spring Student Lock-In night for students this month to cater for the city’s huge undergraduate population.
Retailers at the busy centre will close as usual at 6pm on Thursday, April 30, and then re-open for students from 7pm to 9pm when many will feature special offers to give a helping hand to hard-up young people with discounts and offers available.
There will be plenty of entertainment in the Quadrant and in the city centre with music pumping out, including at outdoor store Saltrock where they will even have local band Dead By Default playing live.
This is the fifth year of the promotion but the first time the event has been held in the spring – the autumn October date will also take place – and organisers are promising that with the Student Lock-In company again involved that it will be a landmark date in the undergraduate calendar.
It will once more overflow from the Quadrant into the city centre with DJs providing music to create a real vibe and access is simple – just register online at the Student Lock-In website.
It has been welcomed by Nanette Turkson, Fashion Editor of Waterfront, the Swansea University student magazine and a final year law student from London, who said: “It’s been a really great event in the previous years and definitely attracts lots of student attention.
“It’s a great idea and I’m pleased it is again extended from the Quadrant to the whole of the city centre.”
Saltrock assistant manager Jess Rogers said: “We’re very excited about the event as we’ve only been open a couple of months so this is the first time we’ve been here for the Lock-In night.
“Students are very important to us and we’re offering an extra 20 per cent discount to them on the night so they could be getting stuff for 70 per cent off.
“We also employ a number of students here and that’s true of many of the stores in the Quadrant so we’re important to them for that reason too.”
The Quadrant is also a big employer of students and among those working there is Jacob Ottaway, 22, from Epsom, who combines studying for a Masters in English Literature at Swansea University with a part-time job at The Fragrance Shop.
He said: “I really enjoy it here, Swansea’s a brilliant place to be a student and the Quadrant is an important source of employment and non-one has been anything but good to me here.
“It’s very friendly and there are a lot of students working in the Quadrant and the hours fit in well with studying.
“I worked at Fragrance Shop for the last lock-in in October and it was really good fun and very busy.”
Russell Greenslade, Chief Executive of the Swansea BID – Business Improvement District, said: “As a company we are always looking at new ideas to support city centre businesses in driving foot flow and spend coupled with providing exciting events for the consumer.
“With Swansea having a large student demographic the Student Lock-In is well followed and attended with businesses reporting good trading from it.
“It’s great we have been able to again team up with The Quadrant Shopping Centre to deliver this event.”
Owen Walbyoff, Manager of Blue Inc, in the Quadrant, said: “It’s a really good idea because Swansea has such a huge student population.
“We’re very much student orientated, they’re very much part of our customer base, and we’re really looking forward to it.”
George Henderson, Marketing Manager for the Quadrant Centre, said: “We had such a fantastic response for last year’s event in particular with more than 4,000 students in the shopping centre and the feedback we had was so positive.
“We’ve been getting so many people asking would we do it again that we decided to add an extra date this year in Spring so that students here can get discounts on the latest trends for the summer.
“There are a good range of shops at the Quadrant and they’re offering some excellent discounts on what should be a really fun night and it’s a great way to show students that the Quadrant is a place where they can shop and that we have something for everyone.
“Swansea has a really high proportion of students, maybe 10,000 in the city and others who go to colleges and universities outside the city and so this sort of event will be of benefit for them and help us showcase how we can help them.”
Shopping Centre Manager Ian Kirkpatrick said: “We have had most of the stores here signing up to providing offers for students and that includes some you might not expect but it should make for a really lively evening.”
This year students need to register for the event on the Student Lock-In website and take their NUS card to the DJ truck in Portland Street on the evening to pick up their armband which will entitle them to entry and access to offers.
