Retail Solutions

The Most Complete Platform of Services to Help Retailers Manage
Their Real Estate Portfolios

We provide the knowledge and experience required to function as a retailer’s fully-integrated and outsourced real estate organization or supplemental strategic planning and transactional execution staff, working in concert with the internal staff.

Our Mission: Help retailers develop and execute new, highly-customized strategic real estate plans that optimize:
   - store positioning;
  - sizing;
  - occupancy costs; and
  - capital expenditure levels.

The result: Maximized brand productivity and profitability.

We Deliver a Customized Real Estate Plan to Meet Your Exact Needs

Our plan covers four principal work categories:

1. Benchmarking and Analytical Work, which provides an analysis and grounding in the retailer’s store performance and occupancy costs by mall and non-mall segment, developer, region, and versus benchmark competitors;

2. Real Estate Strategy and Transaction Targeting, which will align senior management and its real estate team on the exact number, locations, size, targeted occupancy costs, and capital expenditure levels of its stores;

3. Transactional Work, which will execute the aligned upon targeted transaction plans;

4. Post Audits of actual (versus forecasted) performance to ensure that aligned upon targets and assumptions are rigorously tested and revised.

Our Four-Step Process for Managing Your Real Estate Portfolio

Step 1 Analytical and Benchmarking.  Understand variability in performance by:

• Market: size, region, demographics
• Shopping center: type of center, co-tenants, location within center, fashion levels, customer traffic
• Mall and non-mall segmentation
• Landlord
• Benchmarking of key retailers and shopping areas;
• Analysis of store performance (e.g., sales and profit), and occupancy cost metrics by mall and non-mall segment, landlord, region, and other factors;
• Identify the optimal types of locations and store size range

Step 2 Real Estate Strategy and Creation of Targeted Transactions

• Market by market review to identify optimal locations and compare with current location of each store;
• Identify new store opportunities, including targeted locations and store size, year of opening, and targeted occupancy costs and financial metrics (top and bottom line);
• Determine optimal activity for each existing store (renovation, expansion, downsize, relocation, closure, or no activity), year of activity, targeted new size, targeted capital expenditure, occupancy costs, and financial metrics (top and bottom line)
  • Note: sales and bottom line targets/expectations will also be known for each transaction with respect to new or existing stores;
• Use the tactical plans to develop annual views of capital requirements, impact to top and bottom line from real estate activity, and inputs to the company’s financial and strategic plans.

Step 3 Transactional Execution

• Create and manage a team to execute targeted transactions, which are strategically and financially aligned with the company’s objectives;
• Manage the transaction team using the list of targeted transactions by year;
• Prepare all materials and present transactions for approval by the company’s senior management; sales and bottom line targets/expectations for each transaction will also be known;
• Manage the linkages and communications with other functions within the company, such as store design, construction, stores, finance, and other key partners.

Step 4 Annual Post-Audit to Adjust Strategic and Tactical Plans

• Compare expected top and bottom line returns to actual returns by project, region, activity, and location type;
• Based on variance between actual and expected returns, as well as changes in the retail and real estate landscape, validate real estate tactical plans as appropriate.