Hey, everyone. I apologize for the do have to get off early. I promise we will send you a recording of today’s webinar as well. But once again, thank you for your patience. My name is Elliot Cook and I am the Director of at Retail Strategies, the Director of Real Estate at Retail Strategies. And today we’re going to be talking about retail for every season, Building year round vitality in destination communities. And we have people from all over the United States on webinar today. We’re going be talking about a lot of different markets. We know that oftentimes when we think of retail, we think of we think about PD people coming into our markets, people are living in your world. Maybe it’s that you have the year round customer and you’re trying to focus more on being more of a destination. How do you marry those two things together? Put some questions in the chat, enter into the Q and A, ask me questions and I promise you a little time at the end if there’s as many questions as we can. I see everyone coming in and asking where they’re from as well. We’re going to go and obviously go through each of these components. And we’re also going to kind of talk about what you do with all of that information. So first, why does retail matter? And if you’re anywhere across the country, we know that retail is the most visible and accessible economic sector in your community. I always joke, especially right now in primaries and whatnot. It’s often funny how often we see elected officials you may be one at ribbon cutting through getting this done. But in reality, it’s actually a lot of that those retail projects that are the ones that get a lot of that really strong and successful feedback from those flow groups. See there’s being still technical difficulty. Hopefully we can get that fixed here. But in the meantime, I’m going to keep going. Then of course, she’s going go from there as well. In Mineral County, especially if you are a tourist based community. You know, so many people work in hotel and lodging, they work in whatever that is that drags, you know, brings people to your community, but certainly the retail sector. It’s a very general generator of local tax revenue, whether it’s property taxes, sales taxes. And we know that retail anchors all the other sectors or communities. We talked to one twenty twenty six, we are into the second quarter of twenty twenty six. We know from a capital market standpoint, there are a lot of investments. I just got back from the ICSC show in Las Vegas. And I can tell you that there is a lot of people that are chasing real estate assets in the retail sector. Retail vacancy continues to remain very low at four point four percent. Actual retail apocalypse and asking rents are currently going up. Do you know what rent comps look like in your individual community? Thin supply is propping up those rents. So when we talk about retail vacancy at being at four point four percent, certainly something we need to consider. Net absorption, as you can see, actually has gone down. This follows a trend from last year. In the first half of last year we actually saw more closure, we saw openings, but it’s going happen, we saw far more openings than we saw closures. And that has actually happened again in the beginning of Q1. That’s okay. That’s not normal. I mean, not not normal. You oftentimes see retailers that are closing in the first quarter because of decisions they’ve made in the second half of the year because they’re backed by private equity or they’re publicly traded companies. Certainly that drives things that are happening in each of those markets. From a deal activity standpoint, food and value, food and beverage and value based brands continue to headline openings. We’re gonna talk about that here in a little bit. But as I talk about that kind of relationship between rents and vacancy, there is a lot of very little supply and a lot of demand. It’s okay for us to have a little absorption back in, but that quality space remains at a premium. And you probably see that on your main streets and certainly on your national retail corridors as well. There’s opportunities for economic development. I know we have a lot of economic developers on the call. All retail churn like I just mentioned is opportunity. Acquiring quality space from bankruptcy and operating and following those bankruptcy, that bankruptcy really generates a lot of favorable terms for a lot of your markets. The secondary and tertiary markets are a focus. And I think that’s a lot of us on this call. If we are those secondary markets, those tourist markets, and those tertiary markets in more rural areas of the country, retailers are shifting away from those oversaturated urban cores because of the cost of rent, because of the cost of property, and because there is a large shift of the population moving out that way. And that’s certainly causing more people to move and start a lot of retail following going out into those tertiary markets. As an experience economy, I can tell you we’re gonna talk a lot about this. Entertainment venues, food and beverage, Those are the ones that are really looking for new things. I think especially in destination markets, this is a huge opportunity for each of you. Small format attraction, a thousand square feet to fifteen hundred square feet continue to expand. Those are the concepts that continue to expand. And it’s all about really going after that data driven pitch and the incentives. And certainly I can ask, you know, answer a lot of questions around that going forward as well. Seasonal trap, you know, that we need to talk about. Destination communities leave significant sales of tax revenue on the table. The peak season we know, retail planning is designed around the three, four busiest months. And they’re kind of, you know, ignore a lot of the rest. We all know about this, right? Whether you’re that really strong market or that’s year round, or you’re one of those markets that’s really strong in winter, or strong summer markets. So we have people on the Northeast, and people in Florida and areas like that as well, as well as out in the Mountain West. We know that y’all have peak seasons. And oftentimes in those summer months or in those winter months, things kind of seemingly shut down entirely. But we have people that live in those communities often. Certainly we’ve seen this out west with no snow over the last year. There’s weather dependent budgets. So really rainy seasons, how that impacts your local economies. What ends up happening is that your leakage oftentimes goes unnoticed because the people who do live in your communities are fine to drive to the major markets, the Denvers, to the Salt Lake Cities, to go to the Costcos, to do a lot of that weekday and that kind of weekly shopping or monthly shopping. And you don’t oftentimes see that because of those kind of peak seasons that come into your market. Recruitment is reactive oftentimes in your, in those markets as well, when you’re talking about the seasons, certainly it’s important to talk about that, you know, you’re so used to people coming to you and discovering you and finding you and now in your main corridors where tourists come to, it feels like there’s always demand for your real estate. Well, where are those other areas? And are those other areas prime for capturing a lot of your longer term tenants and for capturing your full season year round customers as well. And then having inconsistent hours. Tourism depends on businesses that only operate select months of the year. You know, we have to think about trying to have better hours year round business and that’s very, very important. What kind of retail actually drives tourism? Obviously food and we know in our current day, food is a tourism draw. People travel for food specifically, not just your beautiful views, and your beautiful terrain and things like that. People want those things that they can only get in your markets. Maybe they can’t get them. I live in Alabama, Alabama, but they’re happy to get on a plane and do those things out in your individual markets. And we know that there’s those retail and those entertainment hybrid groups as well. Bowling, gaming, that entertainment use. So many people are asking about that in destination markets. Like you can see Casa Donita in this image as well in Denver, certainly one of those examples for sure. Is it Instagrammable? Obviously in your tourism, you know, draw areas. Where are the areas that are very Instagrammable and is it experiential as well? But retail must serve two distinct customers. First off being the visitors that we talked a lot about. Discretionary spending is what visitors have. They’re there to spend money. They’re there because they’ve saved money to go on the trip to visit each of your markets. The other things we need to talk about are those experiences, you know, and the souvenirs that they’re looking for, things they can only get in your markets or things to remember the trip. They come there with the intent of spending money. That being said, they’re now or never buyers. They’re peak season concentrated like we mentioned, they oftentimes are spending more per trip, higher per trip than somebody who is shopping on a consistent basis or lives in your market. And they’re not as loyal to the specific store. They’re there to spend money. And certainly they’re also there, know, and they’re gonna walk, where can they walk from the hotel to buy something? Where is in the immediate vicinity that they can buy? They’re just gonna pop in the store, buy it and not be as cost conscious because they are tourists in your market. Whereas the year round residents are their single needs are what driving majority of their purposes. Like we are where we all primarily live. They’re repeat habitual shoppers year round, maybe spending less per transaction, but spending obviously all year round in your markets. They’re willing to leave the trade area for basics like I mentioned, going into town, into a bigger city like a Denver or a Salt Lake City or wherever the case may be. There’s the consistent demand. They’re loyal at very loyal to local businesses as well as the national chains. And they’re there because of the quality of life that you provide in your markets. You have to have both of those. Retail must serve both customers for you to have that really strong vibrant market that I think each of you like to see. Retail categories that traditionally thrive in destination markets, like I’ve mentioned, food and beverage, that specialty retail, those experiences. And I hope as you’re looking through each of these thinking, are you fully capturing these for your tourists, for those people who are coming to you because you’re the destination? Obviously capturing whatever outdoor and recreational offering that you have. Home and garden does very, very well. These are all great things too, because they capture the year round customer as well. Food and beverage certainly, having a place to eat, groceries, things like that, especially retail. Home and garden for the people who live there, they want to decorate their homes, the people who choose to live in your markets full time to take advantage of the outdoor component that you have year round. And then finally health and wellness, yoga, fitness, all those things that serves residents daily needs, while also keeping the community livable. So talking about twenty twenty six, what can we expect as we continue to drive into the year? This is updated as I can make it. Certainly we’ve seen over the last year, year and a half closures, Joanne, Party City, At Home, Claire’s, Forever twenty one. If you have old malls, maybe you’ve seen some of these closures as well, but certainly in your shopping centers, the Joanne’s, the Party Cities that were really impacted by online sales or just kind of haven’t evolved like a lot of their retail competitors have. But as we talked about with absorption that opened up excellent opportunities. Joanne fabric stores very, very hot on the market as were the Walgreens and the CBS and the Rite Aid closings that we’ve seen. Really important to mention that Big Lots, Kohl’s, these are retailers that we’ve seen a lot of reductions and liquidations. And it’s important to know when a retailer closes in your market, why did they close? Did they close because it wasn’t being supported in your individual market? Or was it a more corporate decision? Is there a financial decision on Wall Street that was driving the closure in your individual market? Because from a local messaging standpoint, that’s very important. And certainly also matters as we think about backfilling that space going forward. So who’s opening stores? And I did a webinar earlier in the year about experiential retail. This talks about a lot of those HomeGoods, Sierra Trading, which if you’re familiar with Sierra Trading is part of the TJX family, TJ Maxx, Marshalls HomeGoods, Sierra Trading, opening lots of new stores, Burlington, Nordstrom Rack, what we call the treasure hunt retailer, which does very well year round with the people who live in your market, but also people that are visiting your market like to go there because there is the, if you don’t buy it today, it’s not going to be there when you come back for it. So those are great fits for year round customers as well as in destination markets. And then a lot of those specialty brands like IKEA is opening new stores, Uniqlo opening new stores, L. Bean, which would be a great fit in a lot of your markets is opening more stores each year. They’re doing very, very well. As is Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble books. And even if it’s a local level bookstore, bookstores are doing very, very well. People want that tangible book and are really missing that experience that they had. And we’ll talk about in the third place. People really miss Barnes and Noble and they miss bookstores in general. When we think back to the pandemic. A lot of sports experience brands are opening like workout gyms. Like I mentioned, like a solid core, bowling alleys, pickleball, you know, all these different types of brands, putt putt, things along those lines. And then kind of that entertainment for children. A lot of people come to your communities because they’re very family based, because they’re tourism destinations for families. And do they have those offerings like Lego or Build A Bear or Dave and Buster things that people are looking to take their family to do while they’re visiting your destination markets. When we talk about food and beverage, there’s lots of things like markets like Italy, Chili’s is having a huge comeback. Cooper’s Hawk Winery, which if you’re not familiar, you know, really strong wine brand Punch Bowl Social where you can do things like Jut Pin Bowling. Those are brands that are doing very well and continue to open new stores. And then a lot of the chains as well. You know, we’re talking about this here in a little bit, but coffee and chicken. There’s the coffee wars going on and the chicken wars. Starbucks is going to open one hundred and seventy five new stores over the next year. Dave’s Hot Chicken, Raising Cane’s. A lot of these brands are opening lots of new stores over the next year. When we talk about specialty and experience, a lot of these brands too, if you have outlet malls or if you have a high street, that’s really kind of that destination retail, you’re seeing Aritzia, Lululemon, J. Crew, Aloe, Viore. These are brands that are doing very, very well. Very important to see opening new stores. Whole Foods, if you’re looking for like a specialty grocer, and organic grocery is doing very well. You can see Whole Foods has announced they’re planning to open over a hundred stores over the next couple of years. These kind of juice bars like Joe and the Juice, they’re opening like twenty plus new locations going forward. Certainly important to think about also. And when we talk about the national chains, why are they doing so well? Right? This is updated data as of twenty the end of twenty twenty five. The average Chick fil A in the United States was doing nine point two million dollars a year. And when you think about families, sometimes they want to try new things, but they also like to have those chains as they’re getting up on the interstate. Certainly they want those kind of consistent things that they can get wherever they are across the country. Chicken and coffee are the two wars that we talked about. Chick fil A nine point two million dollars Those are in traditional stores, right? Raising Cane’s six point six million dollars. Each of these is up by almost a million dollars year over year in annual sales. Chipotle, like I talked about three point one million dollars. The Coffee Wars over two million dollars per unit in the Dutch Brothers. And maybe you’re more familiar with Seven Brew or Scooters Coffee. But these are very small properties on really small pieces of land. They’re doing over two million dollars a store. Starbucks, one point six million. I talked about, know, chicken as well. Wingstop, two and a half million. Dunkin doing one million per store. And then talking about the relationship, which I think is what this whole webinar is about, is the relationship between national retail and local retail. Oftentimes there is a perception that when a national retailer comes to your market, and if it’s serving more of that everyday customer, that it’s going to run the local retailer out of business, which is what made your markets so special to begin with, which would made that kind of main street that so many people travel from all over the world to come visit your community. It’s going to drive those businesses out. And that’s oftentimes and most of the time, not the case. Most of the time, retailers want to cluster either out by the national retail corridor or down on your main street. And based off of the real estate and based off of their site criteria, that is how they cluster. And most of the time, these two things actually make each other stronger. And we’ll talk about that going forward. Chains don’t kill small businesses. A bad strategy does. Often times, Like I mentioned, the fear is that when the chain comes in, it’s gonna steal all the customers. But the reality is the chains bring traffic that independence benefit from. And co tenancy is what’s so important. Having co tenancy is very, very strong. But having different corridors with appropriate co tenancy is the way you are more strategic about it. Oftentimes the idea is that small shops can’t compete on price or their marketing budget. But we’ll see here in just a minute, small businesses actually win on experience, they win on loyalty and their story, not the price. The downtown loses its character and identity if national chains come in. But we all know that a well known brand validates the market, which signals growth to others. The national chains oftentimes want to come in because the local businesses have done so well, which hopefully in turn shows other local businesses that they can be successful because of how strong the market is. Because it’s bringing in a lot of those national grocers and those other national restaurants, a lot of those national brands. And the idea is that if local owners are closing and leaving town, it’s because of the national chains, but the threat isn’t the chain. It’s having no differentiation strategy. And oftentimes the real estate can really help guiding that. Three lessons we can learn from Main Street, the big retailers following is that really what’s driving new store growth and the brands that are doing it the best oftentimes are those Main Street businesses because they’re authentic, they’re really great about having loyal customers and they’re giving great experiences that the national chains don’t often have. Being focused is so, so important. Having that experience is what drives loyalty. And yes, you gotta use AI. But oftentimes it’s what’s gonna bring people to your business and make them want to come back on a consistent basis. Whether they’re traveling, whether word has spread that it’s that great experience to other tourists, you’re going to come to your market or the loyal customer who maybe doesn’t want to go to Main Street because that’s where the tourists are. That person lives in your business year round or lives in your community year round. How do we get them to come into and shop in both of those areas? Experience is the new anchor. What we think of as landlords in the real estate businesses, we’re thinking about dwell time. Where how do we get more visitors and how do we get them to stay in a shopping center or visit a shopping center on a more consistent basis. Because if you’re gonna, you know, visit three stores, the shopping center is gonna do much better than just getting you to go to that one store. And an experienced type retailer is an anchor, is not the anchor, but it is an anchor to a shopping center. So how do we draw from a further drive time? How do we give more people reasons to visit? And how do we continue to generate more economic impact into your community? When we talk about the experienced economy, trips are driven by emotional motivations, personal passions, and a desire for meaningful connection rather than a geographic location. I say this all to say, we talked about people that are willing to drive into a larger market instead of having, you know, doing all their shopping locally. Also, know Amazon. I mean, online sales are impacting the real estate industry and in the retail industry. But the reality of the situation is if there’s great experiences, people more times than not want to have that experience. We all as human beings, we’re social animals. We want to have those experiences and we’re going to do that. But you have to give a reason to do that. Obviously, retail as subtraction. Experiential retail acts as a critical sub attraction. So that sub attraction that brings people into those markets instead of creating that leakage to other areas. Obviously it helps with hotel occupancy. I know a lot of you have hotels or try and get more resorts and hotels into your markets. Certainly something to consider as well. Helps that year round stability, the social amplification at all, vibe, this authenticity. And I know something you probably, a lot of you are trying to work on is the intentionality of new businesses opening into your market instead of just gimmicks. You don’t want to see things come in short. You don’t maybe want more vape shops or more t shirt shops or whatever the case may be. How are you more intentional in the types of uses you get coming into your market? And then finally, what is the, you know, focusing on on the third place. So when we talk about the year round customer, the person who lives in your market year round or traveling in your market year round, they’re looking for that third place. Really obviously looking for those opportunities to have people and have shared experiences with other locals in your market, right? That can be hospitality infused, it be programming led. What are you doing? What retail offerings are you offering to the year round customer so that they can continue to connect in this way, which is going to get make people want to stay in your markets, going to continue to make your market grow in that way as well. And that’s how you continue to move forward. All right. So what is the retail recruitment process? Where do I begin? If you’ve never done this before, or you’re new to a retail strategies webinar, we always want to remind you that one of the first things you need to do is identify the three top vacancies in your market. Also on your local Facebook groups, when people come and you speak to the city council, what are those target retail uses that they’re always asking you about and looking for? We can talk about some of them going forward as well. And then you need to audit your planning and zoning processes. Because of the topography of a lot of your markets, real estate is at a premium or because there’s so many people building homes in certain areas of your market and because they’re second and third homes for people, the cost of land is outrageous. So how do you plan, you’ve planned properly so that there can be more retail development in certain areas of your market. And then finally answering the question, are you business friendly? If you don’t know if you’re business friendly or not, I say this on most webinars, most of the time I give a speech, it’s bad news and you’re probably not a business friendly community. So knowing that and knowing and working with your existing businesses and trying to recruit new development and new developers in your market helps you answer that question about knowing if you are business friendly or not. If you’ve never seen data on your market, you need to have market analytics. You need to have a market analysis and we’re always happy to provide that to you. If you’ve never seen that, but certainly knowing what your trade area looks like, right? Daytime population. What are those peak seasons? What are the off peak seasons? What is your estimated population? Are you a growing market? Knowing that analysis is so important because data is driving so many decisions in new development in the real estate sector. Certainly when someone’s looking to open a new retail business in your market. If you’ve never seen a customized trade area, this is so important because you’re a destination market, you tell a really unique story. You have people coming from all over the world to visit your market. We want to capture that, but also we want to capture who is the consistent customer, who is shopping at your grocery stores, at your Walmart, at your Target, some of your existing businesses, or maybe visiting something in your downtown. How do we capture that from a cell phone data standpoint? And that really draws a customized trade area. The average household income is super important to know. What does discretionary spending look like for your existing businesses? That number is going to tell a very different story. In this example, in this suburb of Atlanta, you can see the city population was about twenty four thousand people, but the actual trade area population was almost over sixty thousand people, right? More than doubled, which is a existing customer, a legitimate customer tack on the tourists. Now you have a real story to tell that is going get a developer or retailer to really consider the spending power and why they should consider that next location in your market. And this is also information you need to be giving your existing small businesses as well. We want them to have that information in all, you know, and want them to be successful. Because the more those businesses are successful, the more national chains and more other developers are gonna wanna enter in your market as well. And then you can certainly have different corridors for both of those types of growth. Knowing the growth rate is certainly important. And a lot of you have really, really strong growth rate because people are able to work remote. So it used to be a tourist destination for them becomes that year round destination. Talking about the gap analysis as well. When we look at this kind of blue radius ring right here, where are people leaving that radius ring like we mentioned, and going to those larger markets, going to other markets and spending their dollars. This is important to see. And this should guide the types of uses that you’re recruiting. If you have a lot of leakage in food and beverage stores, well this helps you in deciding why you should be recruiting and potentially incentivizing trying to get a new grocery store to your market or a general merchandise. You know, if you’ve got a big housing boom, you’ve got a lot of people moving to your market because they can work remote. Obviously, there might be a leakage in building material and supplies or garden equipment. This is very important to consider. Obviously restaurants, limited service eating places, full service restaurants, and then those specialty things like sporting goods or hobbies or bookstores. You can see that all show up here and that can help you in guiding as you try to go recruit those retailers or why you may want to incentivize specific types of retail to certain areas of your market. So that you can capture them. And that’s, you know, your cell phone knows where home is. It knows when you’re traveling. And it certainly knows when you’re spending your dollars elsewhere. Because oftentimes you’re looking at Instagram or looking at the ESPN app or the weather channel app while you’re shopping in these other areas. So certainly important to see. Knowing walkability is really important as well, because oftentimes people have moved to your markets year round because of the walkable experience they had when they were visitors. So creating more walkability, especially to your national retail corridors is very, very important. So knowing your walk score, how you can create more density, really healthy density without losing the character of your market is very, very important as well. And that also tells not only who is coming there from a tourism standpoint, but who’s there traveling by vehicle and also who’s willing to walk or ride a bike from an existing neighborhood to that potential new development or to that potentially property. And then when you’re creating a checklist of how you identify those properties, these are the things that you really need to be focusing on. Where are those target properties? Kind of creating a rent roll if you’re familiar with that from the real estate sector. Where are the existing properties? Where are the existing vacancies? What might become vacant? Do you know what kind of the gross leasable or gross, you know, area that I could buy property even looks like? Where are those retail corridors? How leased up is it? How do we focus on certain areas kind of target corridors in your market? Maybe the main street, maybe the national retail corridor, maybe where you kind of enter the community, very important to know that. And then kind of going through the process of knowing the property owners. What was the last time you spoke to them? Do you have their contact? Do they have a broker? Do they have an agent? If a property might be coming available, when is the lease expiring? Do you know the square footage? How many acres the land is? You know, is it one acre property? Is it five thousand square feet? Do you know the condition of the property? Do you know the dimensions of the space? All very, very important if you’re gonna be trying to recruit retail to it. What’s the last use? What’s a historical use? Was it a restaurant? So does it already have a brick pit or a grease trap or an exhaust hood that built into the space, which would make it a lot easier for someone to backfill it with another restaurant or something. You know, does it have a place that you know, could deliver supplies into the back of it. Know, all very, very important to know. What are the accents of the property? What are the intricacies of it? Very important to see that as well. What are the property issues? Do you need to know? Are there co tenancy issues? Discoveries? All the last things you need to know. When was the last update you had on that property as well? Hopefully you can take this checklist and kind of start filtering through a lot of those things. And then knowing your universal site metrics, thinking about each property, what are the signage opportunities, which may look very different on main street than out by the interstate or out in the corridor where you’re trying to recruit national retail. How visible is it? Certainly in the Rocky Mountain states, property set up on a hill or down in a hole. Very important to know that. What does the parking look like? And certainly parking might be more at a premium or more available out on your national retail corridor than it is in your typical destination market. How easy is it to access the property? What does the co tenancy like I mentioned look like? And certainly national retail is going to want to be where the traffic is, where the density is. But that may look very different than where your tourists are typically going, which may be better for servicing that year round customer. And then knowing the site criteria of this prospect. I mentioned Chick fil A because they’re doing over nine million dollars a year in sales as a quick service restaurant, But each of them have a very specific site criteria. And if you’re ever curious about it, you can oftentimes find this on their website. Certainly I’m sure AI can help you with it as well. But getting to those real estate directors and getting to their tenant reps is the most important part of this. Cause they can give you an updated site criteria, what they’re looking for, what that new store layout looks like. And all of them have it. Chick fil A has it. These are the things I get asked about every day. Chick fil A, Target, Trader Joe’s. They all have very different, but very specific site criteria. And you could check every box for them. But if you don’t have a piece of real estate that fits that site criteria, it’s gonna be very hard for them to enter that, you know, be that next location for those individual retailers. So ultimately what this is all about is balancing the mix. You know, really we wanna give you some practical guidelines to create a portfolio that works for everyone in your community. Not just the visitors, but the people who live in your markets during peak season and year round. And the real things you need to focus on is like really creating anchors with the essentials for residents. So grocery, pharmacy, those services they’re gonna need all throughout the year. Then from there layer in some of that experience driven retail like food and beverages that visitors are seeking out, but also the year round customers you’re looking for. Prioritize of course, locally owned, especially in your more destination corridors, but you know, because that builds identity and it builds loyalty. But not only that, also remember that National can be a great service and can be a consistent business. That’s not going to shutter for six months of the year or three months of the year. It’s gonna operate year round and can be a great employer for a lot of your residents as well. Designed for the year rounders, not just the peak season traffic. And once again, use data, leverage data to identify what residents most urgently want like that leakage analysis, that gap analysis that we talked about. So how you build that year round strategy is know your seasonality, map your seasonality curve, define the resident gap. Where are the residents? Like I mentioned, obviously identify those off season visitor personas, who visits in the off season as well. Maybe you can try to cater to those groups as well for those year round businesses. They’re different than the summer visitors or the winter visitors, you know, build those strategies for them specifically. Target category before tenant. You know, we talk about leakage. If you need a grocery store, target the category and then start working through what grocers are interested in the market and then would be a good fit in your market. Design incentives around the year round retailers as well because you’re going be collecting sales tax for them year round. And every retailer, whether they be more tourist driven or a year round retailer, they have some months that they do better than others, right? Some do really well around the holidays, some do really well in the summer months, you know, when school is out and things like that, really important to know those things and use your incentives to favor those businesses. Alright, so how do you apply this to your community, whether you’re just starting out or you want to just take that next step? And I see Eric talking about what tools do we for that retail leakage gap. If you’ll email me, know there’s been some audio issues, Myself, Drew, some of my team, we’re happy to help you with that. We’d love to talk further with you about it. And I’ll give you my email here at the end. And we’ll certainly send out this deck as well. If you’re an emerging destination, start with that leakage analysis and visitor spend data. Focus on filling resident essentials first, build your recruitment infrastructure. If you’re an established destination, audit your tenant mix. Always what are you thinking about highest and best use opportunity as well. Identify which businesses are year round or seasonal, recruit specifically for the off season visitors and those year round retailers that would be a great fit for your market. And if you’re trying to modernize, lead with the experience driven retail, to shift identity, use foot traffic data, all that kind of suite of data and that suite of identifying where your real estate assets are to really take that next step. So finally, as I kind of wrap up, please be sure you know, and I can answer any questions or if you had any kind of technical issues at the beginning, happy to answer questions. But I want to remind you to go out and market your community. I try to say every time I give a speech or anytime I’m talking with a client or talking about retail recruitment to anyone out there across the United States, if you don’t know who is telling your story, you’re leaving it up to chance that the wrong story is being told or that no story is being told. And you can’t just assume that people are out there telling the right story or telling even a positive story about your markets. No matter how successful your market is. If it’s super successful, the story could be that rents too high or property costs are too high. And so people aren’t coming into your market because of that narrative. So talk to your tenant reps, talk to your landlord brokers. You need to be consistently having those relationships and figure out who’s telling your story. What is the story about your market? So leverage data, inventory your properties, validate demand. Like we talked about leak analysis and all these different things. Validate the demand that if someone opened a business in your market, it would be a successful endeavor for them. Be the local expert talking and telling your story. Know what the opportunities are. If the narrative on your market is that it’s only successful in the winter months or only successful in the summer months, be the expert taking sure that there’s opportunity in those off season months as well. Build your prospect list like we talked about, make consistent outreach, build relationships like I just mentioned, and finally go out and tell your story. So the key takeaways, stop planning for the peak. Retail recruitment is built around high season leaves you vulnerable, right? Build a strategy for every month or figure out what are the things that can carry you through the off season. Those valleys matter as much as the peaks. Serve your full time residents first. Speak the retailer’s language. I hope I kind of gave you some insight on how to better do that earlier. Recruit categories, not just tenants. Retail is the third place for people who are considering being full time residents or the people that live in your markets. Especially if you have a corridor that is kind of known as the touristy area and a lot of times full time residents don’t want to go down there Or some third place opportunities that you may be reintroducing in that market. Or how do they capture those? You know, how can you be the third place in those off season months so that they don’t close in your off season. And then once again, for year round operators. So what should you do next? Talk it out. Figure out who’s gonna be that point of contact and then start implementing once you’ve got all this together, start implementing it that immediately. Okay. So certainly I know I apologize again for the technical issues and then it sounds like it was kind of choppy. But if you have any questions, please throw them into the Q and A, throw them into the audience chat. We’ll send out a recording certainly can send out the deck as well. I will, if there are audio issues, can rerecord this before we send it out. So happy to do that, but please feel free to send some questions my way for the next fifteen minutes or so. Brie, I see her question here at the bottom. What tips do you have for cold outreach of retailers and brands? Fantastic questions. So I can tell you it could be a challenge to find some of these contacts. That’s why I think it’s always important to identify who are the tenant reps in your market and who are those brokers for a lot of these brands, whether real estate manager, the real estate director, the developers that are doing deals kind of in your region. But what is the tip I have for cold outreach? Is figure out their site criteria or try to get as close as you can to their site criteria before you make that outreach. And then talk about data. You kind of, you know, have that checklist of the things they’re looking for. Well, don’t, if you check a bunch of those boxes, you tell them which boxes you check. And then also always, always provide a real estate, a piece of real estate that they can give commentary on. Here if they need an acre of land, here’s an acre of land or here’s close to an acre. If they need five thousand square feet, fifteen thousand square feet, here’s a fifteen thousand square foot space or something close to it. And that way, not only can they vet your market, but they can also give you feedback on the site. You know, sometimes it’s going to be listen, love the site, but the market just doesn’t make sense to us right now. Or it may be, listen, we’ve been trying to be in your market for five years. We just haven’t been able to find that piece of real estate that we need. That can help guide your conversation. And also I always say that getting a no is as helpful oftentimes as getting a yes, because at least you’re not wasting the next ninety days on trying to get in touch with them and you can know why it is. Because I know especially a local elected officials or people in your local community, they don’t understand why a retailer isn’t there already. That can help in that conversation of telling, explaining to them what they’re looking for and when you might be a viable entry for that being their next location. Great question. What about the voice messaging of the email itself? Yeah, I think, you know, always say use the, our team always uses the, you know, ideology of be brief, be gone. So you’re coming in, obviously be friendly, talk about being a business friendly community, talk about an existing business that may be as successful, but really what you want to get to is this is who we are. This is where we are. Here’s an attachment with a real estate asset. Here’s our trade area. Maybe here’s some leakage data. Know, and here are the things that our market has and here’s the site. That’s what I mean by that. So that’s what I would say. Be friendly, of course, but kind of get to the point and only give applicable data, right? If, you know, certainly I know real estate directors that love to play golf. So yes, like they might come visit your market because you have world renowned golf courses. But if it’s not going to be profitable for them ultimately, and for the brands they represent, it’s not going to help them in keeping their job long term. So the more that you can get directly to the point and show them those great opportunities, as well as the kind of cherry on top of that you bring in, you know, ten million people annually that are tourists. I mean, that’s, that is only gonna help. So you’re great, Great. Great. Great question. Okay. Yeah. Let’s see. Are there any other question? What tools do we use? Yes, for the leakage gap. Certainly tried to answer that as well. Okay, is anybody else? Once again, I see this about the audio. I apologize about that. If there are audio issues, we’ll be sure to go rerecord it and send this over to you. Yeah, does anybody else have any questions? All right, well, again, you know what, apologize for the technical problems for the audio issues. We will record this, send it out. If you have any questions, my name is Elliot. As you can see Elliot Cook, My email is Elliot, two L’s and two T’s at retailstrategies dot com. Thank you again for today. And we look forward to speaking with you in the future. If you have any curiosities or would like to see your leakage analysis, we’re happy to provide that to you. If you’d like any further commentary, maybe some real estate assets that you have, or if you’d like to dive further into talking about recruiting year round retail, as well as focusing on those different areas. We would love to talk further with you. Thank you all for being patient with us. We look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks.
