Are You Missing Important Retailers? How To Target Your City’s Retail Expansion
Your community needs retail. It helps bring in visitors, creates jobs, serves your local population, and increases tax revenue. But just knowing you’d like to bring in more retailers isn’t enough. You also need to know which retailers are missing and how to get their attention.
Having a clear plan is key to retail expansion. And to come up with that plan, you’re going to need a whole lot of very specific information. The easiest way to get that is to work with a professional consultant.
Finding Market Gaps
You probably already have some retail in your city. Even small market communities usually have a gas station or grocery store. And larger markets often have a variety of shops and restaurants already in the community. The question is, what else do you need?
To answer this, you’re going to need to find market gaps in your community. A gap in the market means there’s some need that consumers have which isn’t being met. You need to identify those needs and find a retailer or retailers who can fill the gap. Plus, you’ll also need to look at sites available for development and figure out what you can offer potential retailers who might build in your community.
Running The Data
Without up-to-date demographic data and market analysis, as well as an intimate understanding of how retail works, it’s very hard to figure out exactly which retailers would be best suited to your community. It’s unreasonable to assume that every city government should have someone on staff who’s an expert in retail development. It’s much easier, and more financially sound, to hire an expert consultant when you’re navigating a new retail project.
Retail Attractions has massive amounts of up-to-date data and analytics. These tools give us an advantage in figuring out what demand there is for certain types of business within your community. We can drastically shorten the amount of time your city would otherwise put into data gathering and analysis.
Contacting Retailers
Once you’ve identified what sort of retail your city is missing and which retailers would best fill your market gaps, it’s time to reach out to them. Here, you come up against another challenge. You need to convince retailers to listen to you when you ask them to build in your community.
Retailers take on a big risk when they commit to building in a new market. They want to make sure that there’s a very good chance their new development project is going to succeed before they commit to building in your city. Hiring a trusted retail consultant with a solid reputation, like Rickey Hayes, means developers are more likely to take your community seriously as a good location for development.
Are you ready to take the next step towards expanding retail development in your city? Contact us and we’ll work with your community to figure out which retailers you’re missing and start bringing them into your city.