DMM helps See's Candies Take a Bigger Bite Out of their Tasty Market!

DMM and See's Candies - A Sweet Relationship!

See's Candies knows quite a bit about smart expansion. Founded in 1921, and purchased by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway in 1972, See's Candies operates over 200 stores in Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington (with a Wisconsin store set to open in Spring 2011). Seasonally - primarily during the year-end holiday shopping season - See's offers its products in select markets in kiosks and pop up stores at malls and other shopping centers in an even larger geographic range, bringing the number of states covered to almost all 50! There are also shops outside the U.S. in Hong Kong, Japan and Macau.

They've been using Directory of Major Malls data for many years to help make location decisions.

Real Estate Manager, Kathleen Pelzman, explains: "I have been with See's since 1979 and Directory of Major Malls is certainly an excellent tool for our research of Shopping Centers throughout the country.  It is a huge resource for me and one I think could benefit those just starting out in retail and shopping center leasing.  I have used it for many years - first the printed directory and now online - for our continual expansion throughout the country. DMM is my #1 tool, for the majority of our research.  It provides the detail I need and the ease of navigating the website is really appreciated."

Tama J. Shor, Publisher of Directory of Major Malls couldn't be happier.

"Providing the data for great retailers like See's Candies to make the best possible permanent and specialty retail location decisions year-after-year is really gratifying to us," she says.

Visit www.shoppingcenters.com/smart,  for special money-saving offers exclusively for readers of this blog.

For the most delicious chocolates and treats in the world, visit www.sees.com!

More about DMM...
For over 30 years, Directory of Major Malls has provided the most accurate, detailed and timely development and contact information on the major open-air shopping centers and malls that are approximately 200k and above in size. Our listings cover the spectrum of center types including: open-air community, power, value-retail, lifestyle/specialty/mixed-use and enclosed malls.

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

DMM Shopping Center Lists featured in WestFair Business Magazines!

September 26, 2011                      Special Offers - Click Here!

Each year, WestFair's three magazines include DMM's list of major shopping centers in New York's northern suburbs and Fairfield County, CT.
Their readers in commercial real estate, insurance, finance, construction,
maintenance and more use it to market their products and services to centers.
What can DMM data (online, CD & print) do for YOU?

Review the lists published by WestFair:

Westchester page 1  

Westchester page 2

Hudson Valley page 1

Hudson Valley page 2

More about DMM...

For over 30 years, Directory of Major
Malls has provided the most accurate, detailed and timely development and
contact information on the major open-air shopping centers and malls that are
approximately 200k and above in size. Our listings cover the spectrum of center
types including: open-air community, power, value-retail,
lifestyle/specialty/mixed-use and enclosed malls.

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

Supermarkets are at home in Canadian malls

Interesting commentary on Canadian vs. US shopping center development by Jeff Green, CEO of Phoenix-based Jeff Green Partners.

Supermarkets are at home in Canadian malls

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.

A helpful site with many links to "other" retail industry links

A helpful site with many links to "other" retail industry links.
About.com Help Retail industry links

Find complete and updated retail research about global and U.S. retail industry stores and sales, including history, numbers data, term definitions, and statistics.

Industry professionals, investors, students, retail employees, and analysts can get comprehensive and aggregated research resources about multi-store global and U.S. retail chains here.


More information on Directory of Major Malls, Directory On Computer, and other products related to the shopping center/retail chain industry may be obtained from the website www.shoppingcenters.com .

The KISS of Death (a commentary on chain store sales forecast modeling)

Guest Blog post by Jim Stone, Chain Store Advisors

Jim Stone is the principal consultant of Chain Store Advisors, a consulting firm in Reading, MA.  
Chain Store Advisors works with businesses who operate chain stores including retailers, restaurants, and service businesses.  

The KISS of Death 

Most chain store modeling experts will tell you that a “good” sales forecasting model will estimate sales +/- 20% in 80-90% of the cases.

Most chain store real estate dealmakers believe that they need a model with no more than +/- 15% error 85% of the time.

Most people don’t agree on how this error is measured or what the role of human judgment should be in determining the “official” sales estimate used in calculating the projected return on investment.

Everyone wants to “Keep It Simple Stupid” because it’s hard to make decisions when you are confused about the facts or their implications.  This definitely applies to real estate planning and site selection for chain store operators.  However, most sales forecasting models are anything but simple and are often intimidating to those without strong backgrounds in statistics (which includes the CEO, CFO, and VP Real Estate).

 There is a huge push these days to use technology and mathematical models to increase the quality of business decisions.  From the rigorous discipline of “Six Sigma” in the late 80′s to the recent business analytics wins of companies such as Capital One and Harrah’s, there seems to be an unbridled confidence in the application of computers and statistics to financial analysis.

The problem is that some situations cannot be modeled with enough precision to be useful.

 Chain store sales forecasting is one example.  

The reason is simple:  historical data about the retail marketplace are not static and therefore cannot be used to reliably estimate future sales.

A Framework for Complexity

Let’s consider some different decisions that face chain store operators ranging from simple to complex.

A simple problem is one that can be reduced to an equation and applied repeatedly with very similar results.  An example would be the selection of the size of a steel beam to support a roof in a building.  The force of gravity is consistent and can be used to compute the load requirements of structural steel.  Even if the equation is complicated (to those who are not structural engineers), it is simple, straightforward, and reliable.

A complicated problem is one in which the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis and expertise.  Many business problems fall into this category such as staffing for checkout lines to minimize wait times for customers, logistics for deliveries in the supply chain, and inventory management based on seasonality of demand.  In these cases, historical data provide a reasonable basis for predictive models and can provide a solid foundation for planning and investment decisions.

A complex problem consists of a situation where the relationship between cause and effect can only be determined in retrospect, not in advance.  This is due to large number of variables that influence the outcomes, the changing values of these variables, and the non-linear interactions among the variables.

Chain store sales forecasting is a complex problem.

Although our use of statistical models in sales forecasting has outstripped its usefulness, it would be a mistake to simply revert to “gut feel.”  The chain store industry has a great opportunity to build upon the advances in technology, data, and analytical methods and create a new approach that uses the best of “art and science.”

The best tool for integrating art and science in real estate decisions is the oldest tool:  analogs.

Analogs allow decision-makers to look at a new opportunity, find similar situations from past experience, and use them as a guide to estimating the future performance of trade areas and sites.  Computers and market data can be used to present the “patterns” for comparison and the human brain can be used to assess the similarity of the analogs and adapt them to the new situation.

In chain store sales forecasting, the analog method was first formalized by William Applebaum in the 1930′s.  Since then a vast array of methods have been used to create classification schemes for markets, trade areas, stores, competitors, and customers.  The frustration of this effort is that no two entities are exactly alike, and any attempt to fit them into a scheme will result in a large number of cases near the boundaries of the categories.  For example, let’s say that we define “urban” stores as those with a a population density of 5,000 people per square mile within a 2 mile radius.  Does that mean that a store with 4,999 people per square mile is not urban?

 

The computer can easily compute population density for any location in a second; a human being can’t do this in a year.  However, a human can look at a map of an area and instantly classify it based on a variety of attributes:  its density, proximity to major highways, the presence of retail activity, traffic congestion, and relationship to surrounding cities and towns; a task that a computer program would find daunting, generating comical results in many cases.

Over the next few months we will further explore some new ways to integrate art and science for better real estate planning and site selection.

See Jim's original post and others at  Real Analogies 

What You Always Wanted To Know About Restaurant Leasing (but were afraid to ask)!

By Guest Columnist Paul G. W. Fetscher CCIM, SCLS
President Great American Brokerage, New York, USA

A restaurant is a food warehouse, storage, preparation, cooking, assembly, sales, consumption and disposal facility. Consider the complexity of fitting such a manufacturing plant into structures with another function.

Assume a 300 square meter restaurant as compared to a 300 square meter dress shop. The comparable sized restaurant will require 250% of the air conditioning, 10 times the electrical service 100 time the water consumption, plus gas service and black iron venting and exhaust. It will also require an internal 3-hour rated fire wall and a fire suppression system over any open flames.

These requirements make restaurants the most expensive per square meter investment in any retail or hospitality property. Such capital investment requires a concomitant long term lease to amortize such a large investment. Therefore it is extremely important to assure that the right concept is in the right place.

Some restaurants are destinations; and others are parasites. It’s important to have the right fit!

Drawing Radius

Destination restaurants will draw from the greatest drawing radius; have the highest check averages, but the lowest frequency of customer visit. Examples in Dubai would be the Aquara Restaurant, the Al Mahara Seafood Restaurant at Burj Al Arab or Benihana.

Impulse restaurants are usually found within an arm’s reach of desire. Dunkin’ Donuts, Sbarro’s and Starbucks are good examples. These have a high frequency of customer visit, low prices, and are very convenient to a patron’s existing traffic patterns. That might be a cup of coffee on the way to work, or a noon break not far from work or convenient to a shopping trip.

Casual theme restaurants are somewhere in-between. These are moderate priced restaurants such as TGI Friday’s or Chili’s. This is a convenient place to stop for a hamburger or a salad. Typical visits would be a couple of times a month.

A larger project needs a healthy mixture of these three general categories. In an enclosed regional mall, the destination restaurants would face the exterior and be accessible at later dining hours when the main mall would be slack in activity. The casual theme restaurants can be spread out throughout such a project. Shoppers would have the opportunity to stop during their shopping journey to have a meal and restore their energy.
A World Onto Itself

A Food Court can be a world onto itself. The vast majority of shoppers will visit a food court, and THEN decide which of the vendors will be their selection of the day. This is known as the “Restaurant Row” effect. Restaurant Rows became popular in California in the 1970’s. A large number of popular restaurants were aggregated together. Diners would typically go to the area and subsequently decide where to eat.

Modern Food Courts started in shopping centers such as Sherway Gardens and Bramalea Square around Toronto Canada in the mid 1970’s, then migrated to the United States. A number of successful examples now can be found in the Gulf States.

Food Courts benefit from certain economies of scale. While one unit may have strong breakfast traffic, another sandwich operation may peak at lunch while a third operation may be strongest at dinner. Each of these, with different peak hours of operation, will use the same common dining seats; but just use them at different hours. Such efficiencies accrue to the benefit of all the operators in a food court.

Hotels in the Gulf States have strong foodservice representation. The Las Vegas Hilton was once the largest hotel in the world. It boasted 3,500 rooms. That hotel needed a number of restaurants to serve the needs of the resident population. Those facilities range from a coffee bar to a steakhouse to a diner style operation to a Benihana to two showrooms for a total of 11 foodservice operations. The showrooms would serve from 1,000 - 2,500 patrons for dinner and a Broadway style show.

Cinderella's Slipper

The Dubai Marriott Hotel has but 10% as many rooms, a mere 350 keys. However that hotel also boasts 11 foodservice operations. It’s not Las Vegas, but it is a collection of foodservice operations, appropriate for the market, and serving not only the residents of the hotel, but the influx of patrons form other hotels or from the indigenous population.

Restaurant leasing comes down to finding Cinderella’s slipper. Know your market, and deliver what is appropriate for that customer and that retail or hospitality environment.


(Paul Fetscher, president of Great American Brokerage in New York, was the consultant in the restaurant merchandizing for Dubai Festival City. He has worked on projects from Thailand to Alaska and from London and Paris to Shanghai and Beijing. Needless to say, he has worked on projects throughout the United States.
He will be teaching a course in Restaurant Leasing for the Mid East Council of Shopping Centers on May 3rd in Dubai.)