The Myth Of Showrooming Takes Another Hit

May 15th, 2013
Written by Evan Schuman, StorefrontBacktalk.com

The myth of showrooming—the suggestion that tons of shoppers are flooding stores to only use them as a physical showroom as they had always intended to purchase the product at Amazon—lives on. But a survey conducted in late April by Bizrate Insights is helping to add a little clarity. First, showrooming really doesn’t happen very often. But more interestingly, when it does, it’s more likely to be within the same chain. That’s a problem all right, but the name of that problem isn’t showrooming. It’s internal politics.

Bizrate surveyed more than 9,000 shoppers (between April 24-30) who had just completed an online purchase at one of their e-tailers. The first—and arguably most meaningful—stat is an overwhelming 78.15 percent of those online purchasers had not looked at those products in any physical store. No surprise there, but it’s a key number to remember the next time someone shouts about how showrooming is gutting brick-and-mortars.
When they zeroed in on that remaining 21.85 percent of shoppers who had looked instore before buying online, most of them (54 percent) ended up buying from the same chain. In other words, they were in a Target or a Best Buy and then purchased from Target.com or BestBuy.com.
Granted, that’s a slim margin (in the survey, it’s the difference between 11.8 percent and 10.05 percent—and it’s not clear what the survey’s margin of error was), but it’s still interesting.  Read the rest of the article

Online Retailers Starting to Appreciate Value of Brick and Mortar Stores

Posted by Techvibes Newsdesk on Mar 27, 2013

This article was written by Glen Korstrom and originally published in Business in Vancouver.

E-commerce ventures and traditional retailers are rapidly fusing sales strategies and creating a hybrid model that includes online and in-store purchases.

As street-front retailers reduce store size, opt for kiosk-style outlets within stores and increase marketing budgets for online sales, e-commerce ventures are opening more pop-up stores that last weeks or months instead of days.

Vancouver-based online suit-seller Indochino launched its first pop-up store in Vancouver in November 2011 and has since had seven other pop-up stores in cities such as San Francisco, New York and Chicago.

CEO Kyle Vucko told Business in Vancouver that his company has increased pop-up store opening times to several weeks for the one currently in Boston. Its first pop-up store lasted four days and offered customers the opportunity to book sessions for Indochino staff to take their measurements.
Vucko’s company continues to more than double its revenue each year and recently moved its 40 Vancouver staff to a larger office in Vancouver’s Railtown neighbourhood, east of the downtown eastside.

Vancouver’s other major e-commerce venture, Coastal Contacts, is also scouting around for potential pop-up stores.

It opened a new 1,000-square-foot store under its Clearly Contacts brand on Robson Street between Burrard and Thurlow streets on March 21.

CEO Roger Hardy refers to the store as a “pop-up”; its lease is rumoured to be six months.
Hardy would not disclose the length of the store’s lease, but he said it’s shorter than leases that most retailers sign and that he is simply testing out the location.

Coastal Contacts’ Lensway subsidiary operates six street-front locations in Sweden, and Hardy said the stores have helped boost e-commerce sales in that Scandinavian country.

“There’s evidence that hybrid models of retail are going to be the most successful.”

FUTURE OF RETAIL

Indochino and Coastal Contacts’ moves come as another successful e-commerce retailer, U.S.-based Bonobos, is taking pop-up stores one step further by opening Bonobos Guideshops.

• Click to read the answer and the rest of the article…

Landlords are finding it easy to fill empty big boxes

March 28, 2013
Shopping Centers Today

Remember those vacant big-box store sites that were expected to gather dust for decades? Today, the only dust seen at many of them is the kind that's getting kicked up by the procession of tenants scrambling to fill them. Minimal new retail construction, coupled with improvements in the housing, employment and lending sectors, have retailers and a host of other users re-filling boxes of all size from Billings, Montana to the Big Easy.

Though deals have yet to return to pre-recession pricing, big-box vacancy is dropping and cash flow is rising faster than many predicted just a few years ago. A prime example: the brisk leasing and sales activity of the nearly 400 vacant Borders Books spaces returned to market following the retailer's 2011 bankruptcy. Even in economically pressed Michigan, 11 of the state's 18 former Borders locations had been absorbed as of February 2013 and several other deals are working, a February report in the Detroit Free Press said. One of those is in Borders' former home base of Ann Arbor, where the bookseller's old two-level, 44,000-square-foot flagship store is being subdivided into five first-floor retail and restaurant spaces and a bank of second-floor offices.  In Billings, Montana, Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts emerged to take over a former Borders in Marketplace West, beating out about a half dozen other national retailers, developer and leasing agent Steve Corning said.

Last summer, Fresh Market took over a former Borders on stately St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, while in central Philadelphia, Walgreens is  moving into a former three-floor Borders where it will mirror new-concept stores that it previously opened on New York's Wall Street and Chicago's Michigan Avenue. The store will feature a salon, salads, juice bar, fresh sushi and a doctor-attended wellness center.

The Borders blitz seems destined to continue. A few miles from the Notre Dame campus in South Bend, Indiana, Whole Foods is set to open April 10 [2013] in an old Borders, while another healthy grocery, Asheville, N.C.-based Earth Fare, has opened in an old Borders space in Noblesville, Ind., near Indianapolis. "Borders had great real estate and unlike a lot of the vacant boxes, it was a part of that same tribal gathering of tenants that went into many of the modern-day lifestyle centers," said David Palmer, head of Dallas/Fort Worth development for Dallas-based Cencor Realty Services. Among retailers taking former Borders in Texas are Nordstrom Rack, Container Store and Neiman Marcus Last Call. But not all the Borders went to retailers. A former Borders at Westfield Southcenter Mall in Tukwila, near Seattle, went to Hope of the City Church.

It isn't just old Borders boxes that are getting absorbed. The Detroit report said 17 of Michigan's 21 former Circuit City big-box locations are either occupied or scheduled Read the full article

What Exactly is a Pop-Up Store

Posted by Storefront Team at The Store Front Blog
March 22, 2013 at 8:27 am

photo credit : Storefront.com

Whether you hear temporary retail, flash retailing, pop-up store, or pop-up shop, it is all one and the same. Pop-up shops are taking over the retail world and rethinking traditional brick-and-mortar and big-box stores, but what exactly is a shop that pops up?

Sighted as early as the 1990s in large urban cities such as Tokyo, London, Los Angeles and New York City, pop-up shops and pop-up retail are temporary retail spaces that sell merchandise of any kind. That’s right, just about every consumer product has been sold via a pop-up shop at one point in time. From art to fashion to tech gadgets and food, pop-ups are exciting because they create short-term stores that are just about as creative as they are engaging. And they come in all shapes and sizes.

Specific Details:

• Term: typically a 3 days to 3 months.
• Location: high foot traffic areas such as city centers, malls, and busy streets.
• Price: much lower than a traditional store, typically paid upfront.
• Use: launch new product, generate awareness, move inventory, vet idea, increase ‘cool’ factor.

What are the benefits of a pop-up shop?

• Connect with customers: The pop-up retail format allows you to personally get to know your customers and build stronger relationships.
• Sell more: About 95% of all purchases are still completed offline. This is your opportunity to take advantage of the retail channel.
• Build awareness: Consumers and the media love the excitement generated by pop-up shops. Build awareness by going offline!
• It’s cheaper: Launching a pop-up shop is 80% cheaper than a traditional retail store
• Test new markets: Easily enter a new market and launch new products

 

So, who can start pop-up shop?

• Click to read the answer and the rest of the article…

From NRF - The State of Retailing Online Report 2013

The State of Retailing Online 2013 launches! 

We're excited to announce that the results of the first survey of the State of Retailing Online 2013 study were released on January 13, 2013 as part of the First Look track at the NRF BIG Show.  Covering metrics and key initiatives for retailers in 2013, the report findings help retailers benchmark their online business and highlight areas of focus in e-commerce this year. 

To learn more or to participate in a future SORO study later this year, please contact Fiona Swerdlow, Head of Research at Shop.org.   

 

Key Take Aways from the Report:

Key eCommerce Metrics Continue To Grow
On average, the web retailers surveyed in Forrester and Shop.org’s annual The State of Retailing Online study saw growth of 28% in 2012 over 2011. The majority of retailers also responded that the following key site metrics improved in that same time frame: site conversion rates, average order values, and the percent of sales from repeat shoppers.

Key eCommerce Metrics Continue To Grow
On average, the web retailers surveyed in Forrester and Shop.org’s annual The State of Retailing Online study saw growth of 28% in 2012 over 2011. The majority of retailers also responded that the following key site metrics improved in that same time frame: site conversion rates, average order values, and the percent of sales from repeat shoppers.

Mobile sales are Growing particularly Rapidly
While Forrester’s mobile commerce forecast figures show a minority of eCommerce sales (less than 5%) coming from phones, the retailers that responded to our survey said that, on average, they experienced a 129% lift in year-over-year sales from smartphones and a 178% lift from tablets.

Mobile has a net positive impact on Retailers’ Conversion Rates
Th irty-six percent of the retailers surveyed said that mobile sales and traffic have helped their company’s overall web conversion rate, while 29% of the retailers said that mobile sales and traffic have decreased their overall conversion rate.

Site optimization is The Key investment area For 2013
Retailers say that their top priorities in 2013 are improving their site’s conversion rates and redesigning their site experience -- in other words, optimizing their site’s overall performance. Many retailers specifi cally called out plans to focus on the checkout experience and to adjust their site to accommodate a responsive design framework.

Click here for the Table of Contents & Figures.

Click here for more details on the report and how to obtain a copy

How Santa's Helpers are spending their time and money in-store vs online!

The 2012 Holiday Shopper Unwrapped
 

How Santa's Helpers are spending their time and money in-store vs online!

In the last few days of the holidays season, POPAI brought us their insight into the 2012 Christmas shopping season.

"Tis the season to spend. This season, holiday shopping sales are expected to reach $586 Billion. From an individual consumer spending standpoint that translates to a spend of almost $1000 over the months of November and December. Gifts, decorations, cards and food top the list of pre-holiday purchases at an estimated $984. The spending won't end on December 24th either. An additional $235  is projected to be spent on post-Christmas deals and self-gifting once the holidays are over"

 Click here to see the full infographic and article

Click here to see the full infographic

Forget teens. Malls want to be hangouts for adults

By Eric Wolff
North County Times
Shopping malls want to be Starbucks.
In the same way that coffee shops transcended the idea of selling caffeinated beverages to become community hubs, malls want to transcend shopping and become the place where everyone — and not just teenagers — come to meet, socialize, or get some work done. Five San Diego County malls recently unveiled multimillion dollar renovations that introduced new, socially oriented seating arrangements, upgraded food courts and dining options, and free Wi-Fi — all intended to make malls a destination place to spend non-shopping time. Mall owners hope a rising tide of new amenities, along with a busy schedule of events, will lift all tenants.
“If we enrich their lives, they’re going to come back to us and shop with us,” said Steve Dumas, senior vice president of design for Westfield USA.
Malls have been under pressure along with the rest of retail when sales plummeted during the recession and subsequent sluggish recovery. After hitting a sales peak of $416.20 per leased square foot in 2007, sales fell 12 percent to $365.39 in 2009, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, an industry nonprofit. Compounding matters, the national vacancy rate for super regional malls — malls with 800,000 square feet or more, including Fashion Valley and Westfield UTC — jumped from 6.7 percent in 2006 to 10.6 percent in 2009....Read the complete article

Black Friday Results Are In: The Centerpiece of a Huge Multi-Day ‘Bricks-and-Clicks’ Shopping Spree

Black Friday Results Are In: The Centerpiece of a Huge
Multi-Day ‘Bricks-and-Clicks’ Shopping Spree

By Brad Tuttle for
Time Magazine

Nov. 26, 2012

  If Black Friday was just a day when retailers were concerned solely with in-store sales, then Black Friday 2012 was something of a dud. But the idea of “Black Friday” has expanded far beyond a mere 24 hours, as well as the traditional in-store experience.

The retail research firm ShopperTrak estimates that shoppers spent $11.2 billion at physical stores on Black Friday. That represents a 1.8% decline from Black Friday of 2011. Does this mean that the importance of Black Friday to retailers is also on the decline?

Not remotely. What’s happened, then, is that Black Friday has grown so big that it cannot be contained in a single 24-hour period, nor are its sales and promotions limited to the stuff displayed on shelves and racks at the mall. Today, “Black Friday” begins on Thanksgiving morning (if not earlier) when retailers flood e-mail subscribers with special online shopping offers. It stretches on to Thanksgiving night, when stores open their doors for Black Friday door busters several hours before Friday has truly arrived. On through the long holiday weekend the stream of sales and promotions continues, encompassing every mode of shopping known to man.

As the Associated Press reported, in-store sales on Friday itself fell, naturally enough, directly as a result of so many stores opening on Thanksgiving night. Because shoppers were whipping out credit cards and cash at Target, Walmart, Toys R Us, and elsewhere on Thursday night, they (probably) weren’t loading up their shopping carts the following morning, the actual Friday of “Black Friday.”...Read the complete article

NRF Report: Election 2012 in review: The impact on retail

 

 

 

NRF Report: Election 2012 in review: The impact on retail

By Craig Shearman, VP, Government Affairs PR |

November 7, 2012

After $6 billion in campaign spending and a barrage of political ads in an election that hinged largely on jobs and the economy and which will impact a wide variety of public policy issues important to the retail industry, Americans woke up this morning to a familiar government. President Obama won a clear victory over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, with a 50-48 percent lead in the popular vote and a total of 303-206 electoral votes, but voters left Congress divided.

While some news organizations reported slightly conflicting numbers this morning, the New York Times said Republicans retained their majority in the House 232-191 while Democrats remained in control of the Senate 52-45. Some races remain undecided but are not expected to affect the majority in either chamber.
While Obama’s win was decisive, it was built on slim majorities in just a handful of battleground states, and Obama is the first president reelected since Woodrow Wilson with a smaller margin in the Electoral College than his first-term election. Out of more than 120 million votes cast, the final margin of victory hinged on fewer than 360,000 votes in Florida, Ohio, Iowa, and Virginia.
As a status-quo election, it is difficult to discern a clear message from the results. The narrow nature of Obama’s reelection margin suggests more of a validation of his campaign strategy than a vindication of his first term policies, and House and Senate leadership are likely to return to familiar scripts in the next session of Congress.
Down the ballot, Senate Democrats defended their majority thanks to strong recruits in open-seat races and a series of self-inflicted wounds among Republican Senate candidates.

...Read the complete article

Do you know who created the modern shopping mall?

Well, his name was Victor Gruen and he was a true visionary.
Odds are you’ve never heard of him, which is a shame because this
architect from Vienna  revolutionized the way people shop in America,
and around the world, and we all owe him a big thanks! Read on... 

Hallandale Beach, FL mall chosen for coveted spot on the 2012 DMM Print directory front cover!

December 2011                   

After weeks of deliberation, The Village of Gulf Stream Park in Hallandale Beach, FL has been selected as the featured property on the cover of the upcoming 2012, 33rd edition of the Directory of Major Malls (pre-orders are now being taken, with shipping scheduled by end of January 2012)!

"Every year, we search through the list of properties in our database, looking for just the right one for the cover of our newest book which has metamorphosed, just as the industry has, into providing coverage way beyond the standard enclosed mall retail project. Retail has changed dramatically over the past decade and we now see it tied in with a
variety of other venues and attractions. Therefore, we try to reflect this in
our cover images as well.  Historically, our covers have always featured an exciting new retail project or one that has experienced a major renovation very recently," explained Tama J. Shor, Publisher of Directory of Major Malls. "When we saw this recently opened retail destination in Florida with its stunning architecture and vibrant shopper activity, plus its location and tie-in to the race track, we knew we had the right mall to present on the cover on our 2012 directory and that they'd be very excited about it, too," she added.

More about DMM...

For over 30 years, DMM has offered the most comprehensive and accurate information on major open-air shopping centers and malls which are approximately 200k and above in size. Listings cover the spectrum of center types including: enclosed malls, open-air community, power, value-retail centers, as well as lifestyle/specialty/mixed-use projects of any
size. The 2012 directory has over 2,300 pages packed with data on those
properties. You can also subscribe to the powerful yet user-friendly DMM
Online!

Visit http://shoppingcenters.com/topstory12-2b,
for special money-saving offers on the 2012 Print Directory PRE-ORDER, as well as DMM Online for immediate access.

Directory of Major Malls data is available in a suite of formats including Online, Print directory, Custom databases and reports, and Licensed
datasets for GIS integration and analysis.

'Tis the Season for Shopping Local: Mom-and-Pop Retailers Hopeful About Holiday Sales

A positive outlook on the upcoming holiday season...
  
New Manta Survey Reveals Half of Small Retailers Are More Optimistic About Holiday Sales This Year Compared to Last Year...
 

 'Tis the Season for Shopping Local: Mom-and-Pop Retailers Hopeful About Holiday Sales

Manta Launches SMB Wellness Index, Reveals New Business Activity on the Rise in Q2

COLUMBUS, Ohio--November 1, 2011--As big-box retailers like Wal-Mart reinstate layaway payment plans to combat an expected drop in holidays sales, nearly half of small retailers (49 percent) say they are more optimistic about holiday sales this year versus 2010, according to a new survey from Manta, the largest online SMB community. The survey of nearly 800 small retailers, most with fewer than 10 employees, also revealed that four in 10 are heading into the busiest shopping season of the year with better sales than they had last year.   Click to read the entire article ... 

Gruskin Group™ Says Retailers Will Leverage the ‘4C’s’ to Keep Customers Engaged and Their Brand Relevant

Guest Blog post by Gruskin Group a leading retail design firm.

 

What’s Next for Retail Environments: Social Experience Retailing

Historically, conventional wisdom suggested that retail environments be updated every three to five years to remain “fresh” and plugged into the consumer marketplace.  Today, the cycle is more of an ongoing process, say experts at Gruskin Group™, one of the nation’s leading retail design firms, and “social experience retailing” where their virtual and real world strategies converge, is pivotal to how retailers will keep their customers engaged.

“The explosion of technology and the subsequent real-time access to thousands of petabytes of data through smart phones, tablets, and computers, coupled what we refer to as the four ‘C’s’—convergence, convenience, connection, and cost – are having a meaningful and collateral impact on retail.  This, in turn, has allowed fickle consumers in our ‘immediate gratification’ environment to flip the personalization promise on retailers from the very nice ‘have it your way’ offer to ‘provide it my way or it’s the highway,” explained Kenneth A. Gruskin, principal and founder of Gruskin Group.

“As a result, retailers are rolling out ‘experience store’ concepts, combining physical and virtual strategies with localization and individualization to keep customers engaged and their brand relevant to their physical and digital lives,” Gruskin noted. 

According to Gruskin Group, in order to offer this kind of social experience retailing, retailers will offer their own unique recipe of the 4Cs, which are defined as follows: 

Convergence: with the unification of social networking, commerce, and technology, augmented reality (AR) will become a key technology that will help to close the digital divide that separates our physical and virtual domains. Also, retailers will form brand sharing partnerships to provide compelling alignments that will attract customers and get them invited into their lives and communities through the integration of SER (social experience retailing) and CTR (convenience transaction retailing).

Convenience:  retail products, services, and virtual goods being provided through multiple physical and virtual channels will become ubiquitous to the end user. Localization will become “neighbor hooding” with virtual, smaller and better trained, localized brick-and-mortar facilities supporting a retailer’s embedded customer base while offering a global reach.  The supply chain distribution system will be updated to provide instant gratification by delivering goods and services immediately from anywhere to anywhere.  Further, technology and systems will empower customers to learn, explore, and make knowledgeable, informed purchasing decisions wherever they are.

Connection:  Successful retail brands must continuously establish deep, personal relationships with their customer and reflect their value and core beliefs with authenticity if the brand is to be seen as an extension of who “they” are. The brand and retail experience must be literally connected and accessible to the individual wherever they are through the web and local brick-and-mortar stores alike (which celebrate the community in which they are located).  As a result, the design of all of these retail touch points, both physical and virtual, will be more important than ever to keep a brand positioned to be visible, to maintain/improve its perceived value, and to help individuals identify and stay connected with retailers that align with their core beliefs and lifestyle.

Cost:  For the individual customer, cost will be based on their personal view of the perceived value of the product or service being offered. For the retailer, cost will primarily be a function of whether SER or CTR is the priority.  If CTR is paramount to the retailer, lowest cost and convenience will be the priority. For those with SER as the end goal, brand equity, alignment, and integration with their personal goals, lifestyle/life stage and community will be crucial.  For both SER and CTR, global/local manufacturing approaches and supply chain management will not only continue to have huge cost implications, but as customers demand personalization/ individualization of all of their goods and services, being able to manage the costs of customized, mass produced goods “on-demand” will prove to be the real challenge.

“Total convergence of the virtual and brick-and-mortar retail experience empowered by social networking concepts and technology is inevitable. And the relationship between brand equity and cost will be shaped to a large degree by how consistently retailers deploy their brand image.    For retailing, it means the next 10 years, the next 40 years, will be exciting times of experimentation and constant reinvention,” Gruskin added. 

About Gruskin Group™

Gruskin Group™ is an integrated design firm that builds unified brand experiences through architecture, brand development, visual communications, web/interactive, industrial design, interior design, strategic consulting, and sustainable design. 

Ranked by DDi magazine as one of the top 20 retail design firms in the U.S. for the past three years, Gruskin Group was named to the Inc. 5000 in 2009 and 2010.  The firm’s and its professionals’ award-winning work has been recognized by AIA, the Retail Design Institute, New York Ad Club, New Jersey Ad Club, ASID, Graphis, and the Association of Graphic Communications.  For additional information, visit www.gruskingroup.com.

Reporting On Over 7,100 major Shopping Centers and Malls In the US and Canada

Announcement: Directory of Major Malls has just released its 2011 dataset and products focused on the over 7,100 major shopping centers and malls throughout the US and Canada. DMM products includes shopping center and mall locations, details, physical features, demographics, tenant lists, site/plans with contact details including name, addresses, emails and websites. Available online, in print, on CD and through licensed datasets.

NYACK, New York (January 20, 2011) - The Directory of Major Malls has already started shipping and providing online access to its 2011 data and products. An aggressive research effort taken on by the research team at Directory of Major Malls over the past 12 months propelled the inventory of detailed listings to over 7,100 major shopping center and mall records and 290,000 store locations. The addition of over 1,190 listings is a 20% increase and coverage of 3.3 billion square feet of major shopping center and mall retail space in the US and Canada.

An important point to highlight in the Directory of Major Malls coverage is the effort toward continuous coverage of major future and proposed retail projects. Over 450 planned/future shopping center and mall locations are included in the comprehensive 2011 Directory of Major Malls dataset. Coverage of these proposed centers totals out to over 248 million square feet of future retail space with an emphasis on the retail shopping centers classified as Lifestyle/Specialty/ Mixed-Use.

In addition to efforts to expand the coverage of listings for major shopping centers and mall with approximately 200,000 sqft of gross leasable retail area, the DMM team has further increased the level of inclusion of site/leasing plans as additional insight into the physical configuration of the centers. Currently almost 50% of the listings include a site/leasing plan image of a level of the shopping center.

Additionally the 54 full-color metro area maps, a mainstay of the DMM products, have been further enhanced to show Urbanized Area imaging within the highlighted metro market areas and the locations of over 2,600 of the major centers pinpointed on the maps. The longitude/latitude coordinates used to determine the locations of the centers are manually verified for these locations as well as the complete dataset of all listings in the Directory of Major Malls products. These coordinates are available as an add-on dataset in the Directory of Major Malls semi-annual CD release as well as within custom licensed dataset used for integration in third-party GIS/mapping and analytics applications.

Another supplemental dataset for the Directory of Major Malls products is the Trend Demographic add-on dataset creating in partnership with Scan/US of Santa Monica, CA. This add-on component is available as both searchable and informative data fields portraying the four trend variables for 5, 10 and 20 mile radii around each of the US shopping centers in the DMM database. Access to this valuable component is available within the recently redesigned online subscription site at http://shoppingcenters.com, the Directory on Computer CD releases as well as custom dataset licensing.

"With over 30 years of active participation in the industry as a dependable source, the Directory of Major Malls products continue as the leading source of this specialized data to the shopping center, retail and financial industries." said Publisher Tama J. Shor. "Our research team has continued to maintain the highest level of accuracy with our existing inventory of listings as well as continually increasing our coverage."

"In these turbulent times for the retail industry," she continues, "it's even more urgent that a source such as DMM is available to provide retail real estate professionals and the financial industry with accurate, current information. With monthly updates to our online subscription site, Directory of Major Malls on the Web and the semi-annual releases of our licensed datasets and CD product, we're doing just that. Our daily mission is to identify and capture the ongoing ownership and personnel changes, store openings and closings, along with any new and redevelopment project activities."

Shor continues, "30+ years ago when the Directory was first developed, it was at a time when major enclosed mall development was in the early stages and the focus of many retail projects. All this time, we've maintained ringside seats and have watched shopping centers grow and transform several times over. The diversity in the types of retail complexes that now comprise this dominant part of the retail community is just amazing."

"Each listing of the 7,100 included in the Directory of Major Malls products is comprised of a variety of details with regard to location, demographics, physical features, a categorized tenants list and contact details in the areas of development, leasing, marketing and management. At this point in time, our brand name is a bit misleading in the sense that well over 50% of our listings are not enclosed malls as our name portrays but in reality the majority of our major shopping center listings are open-air in design and fall into a variety of classifications such as community, power and lifestyle/specialty and value-retail centers," Shor pointed out. "There's also an increasing number of projects that are planned mixed-use communities that have included a relevant amount of retail space mixed in with residential, office, entertainment and hotel space," said Shor.

"We're quite proud of the achievements of our research team and the longevity of Directory of Major Malls as a significant source to the industry for such an extended period of time. Our customer base covers any and all professionals involved in some aspect of the shopping center industry whether it be retail leasing teams, financial investors, development and management sector as well as firms involved in research, design, promotion, marketing and supplier end of the industry. We'll continue to be a dependable resource and look forward to expanding our coverage and expanding our partnerships to increase the exposure of the DMM dataset as an important element for retail analysis." Shor added.

--------------------------------------

Directory of Major Malls, Inc. is based in Nyack, NY. It continues to be the leading source of detailed information on the major enclosed malls, open-air shopping centers, and lifestyle/specialty centers for over 30 years. DMM is used by retail real estate professionals, development and management companies, brokers and financial investment firms, service and supply companies, and government and academic research institutes.

The 2011 products include over 7,100 major shopping center and mall listings, 290,000+ tenant location,3,300+ site/leasing plans, 54 full-color metro area maps and the portfolios of the Top 50 Owner/Developer and Management companies which control over 70% of the industry.

The Directory of Major Malls data is available in our suite of standard products including subscription based on-line and "pay per record" access, on a semi-annually released CD, a hard copy 2,300 page print directory and through individual dataset licensing and a network of resellers. Details of Directory of Major Malls may be found at www.shoppingcenters.com.

For further formation, contact : Tama J. Shor, Publisher at P.O. Box 837, Nyack, NY 10960, phone: (845) 348-7000, Ext. 200, or email: publisher@shoppingcenters.com

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