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One of the unexpectedly viral series of posts this year for me has been the Nostalgic Retail and Nostalgic Restaurant Series. These have been fun to do, have brought back successful strategies, questionable decisions, failed leadership, and most of all....brand attachment that we all had to many of these
Retailer
Founded in 1943 by German immigrants Hilda and Berthold Reich, Sigmund and Mathilda Rohrbach, and Justin and Alma Zimmerman, the business began as the Cleveland Fabric Shop in Ohio, later adopting the Jo-Ann Fabrics name as it expanded beyond a single location. Becoming a publicly traded company in 1969,
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I decided to dig into the history and theory of site selection, wanting to write about it, but with brevity (and not with the old "walking though 5 miles of snow to get to school attitude). Site selection has significantly evolved over the years...part due to economic development
Nostalgic Retail Series
Marshall Field’s roots trace to 1852, when Potter Palmer opened P. Palmer & Company in Chicago as an upscale dry-goods store focused on service and trust. In 1865, Marshall Field and Levi Leiter joined the business, and by 1881 Field had taken control and rebranded it as Marshall
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In Commercial Real Estate, data used to be scarce, proprietary, and hard to access. Today, the pendulum has swung in the other direction. We are awash in information: geospatial data, foot traffic data, building sensor data, hyperlocal demographic and persona data, transaction data, crime and employment data, sophisticated predictive models
Retailer
In 1992, Musicland Group saw an opportunity to revolutionize entertainment retail by creating a one-stop superstore that combined everything a media enthusiast could want: CDs, VHS tapes, video games, books, electronics, toys, anime, and more. The first Media Play opened its doors in Rockford, Illinois, at the Forest Plaza
Nostalgic Retail Series
Founded in 1951 by husband and wife Carl and Dorothy Bennett, Caldor started as a modest second-story "Walk-Up-&-Save" operation in Port Chester, New York. The couple pooled their $8,000 in savings after visiting an E.J. Korvette store, inspired to create something different
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In the commercial real estate industry, data-driven decision-making has become essential. Among the various data sources available, mobile location data (MLD) has emerged as a powerful tool, but one that requires careful understanding and application. I talked about this many years ago, not long after this data became
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Back in 2022, I did a presentation where I started to touch on the idea that sales per square foot was no longer a good measure of retailer performance (and don't judge on the slide format - I was in my "dark mode mood" back then) Fast
Retailer
Founded in 1951 by Sam Gutowitz, Sam Goody built its reputation on discounted vinyl records and became a major music retailer in the 1980s and 1990s. It operated more than 800 locations at its peak and was especially known for its “Goody Got It” slogan and broad selection of music,
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Why Retail Must Rethink Generational Stereotypes There's a fundamental shift happening in how we understand consumers, and it's forcing retail and commercial real estate to evolve beyond traditional demographic segmentation. The Perennial Mindset Gina Pell introduced the concept of "Perennials" in 2016: Individuals of
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I have heard a lot lately about both data fatigue and disparate data in #CRE. The former relates to the industry being swamped with data and trying to make sense of the noise. The latter comes once you decide on the data you need (a feat in itself), and none