This week I attended the quarterly Commercial Broker Breakfast put on by Santa Cruz’s Economic Development Department and was impressed to learn they have recently hired a Retail Coaching Firm to help identify upcoming retail opportunities, recruit both national and local tenants, and provide coaching on a long-term basis to help ensure success.
The firm they hired is a recognized expert in the field of retail coaching, serving over 850 clients across 41 states, with over 25 years of experience recruiting retailers to communities.
Taking a data-based approach, the firm uses analytics to determine retail and development opportunities that could otherwise be overlooked, while helping avoid an oversupply of competing interests that could hurt chances for success. They connect developers with retailers who could be a good fit for the projects they build. They provide marketing and branding support to help capture the unique identity of the community with the goal of revitalizing its downtown. And they provide coaching and ongoing support.
While I wasn’t thrilled at the possibility of large numbers of chains coming into our beloved downtown and changing the vibe, they assured us that they are equally committed to provide support to existing local merchants and restaurant operators seeking guidance.
Their presentation included a lot of statistics, including comparisons of how our local chain retailers stack up against national averages and comparisons of our median and average income statistics to those of other areas. One of the more revealing datapoints was how they can identify details like frequency of visits and where the visitors come from by tracking their mobile location data, using the GPS that is on everyone’s phones.
Despite the inherent anxiety brought on by Big Brother watching everything we do, the data that is made possible through these practices can have many positive uses, such as helping a business identify missed opportunities and determine ideal days and hours of operation. And using the data to create profiles of the classes of customers who frequent the area, they can better determine why certain business models aren’t doing well, while others might do better.
The feedback from the brokers present was largely positive, with appreciation given to the city for investing in the local business community to help drive more economic growth. Comparisons were made between spaces in the downtown which have experienced success with similar cases in other communities, and there was some brainstorming about locations which continue to struggle or sit vacant, in hopes of finding better solutions for those spaces.
To that end, I am starting to initiate discussions between the Retail Coaching team and several of my local restaurant and retail clients seeking to either bring new energy and life to their businesses or find new operators to step in, and I am curious to see what comes of these discussions.
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