A newsletter at the intersection of retail and commercial real estate
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Same macro environment. Same interest rate cycle. Same headlines. Opposite outcomes, depending on whose balance sheet you're looking at. Ask anyone outside this industry what happened to American retail last year and you'll get the same answer: it contracted. Joann liquidated. Party City liquidated. Rite Aid
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The most important word in CRE right now isn't AI. It's place. It's always been place. Let me explain how I arrived at that conclusion, and why it took a trip to Las Vegas to remind me. I just came back from ICSC. Two
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Why an industry built on the Power of Where has confused data with understanding, and what it costs the people making real decisions. Walk into any commercial real estate strategy session, retail planning meeting, or lender review. You will see a heatmap. It will be beautiful. It pulses with reds
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Here's a pattern nobody's naming. A VP of Real Estate or a CRO gets hired. They inherit a data stack. They spend four months learning what the platforms do, which ones to trust, which reports matter. Somewhere around month six, they start asking the right questions.
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Sit through enough data vendor demos in #CRE and you start to notice something. Every dataset is "proprietary." Every platform has a "unique edge." Every company is the only one who can give you "this view of the market." Funny thing - pull back the
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Every conference. Every pitch deck. Every vendor demo. The message is the same: AI will save you. Faster decisions. Smarter insights. Automated everything. The hype is real. And honestly? Some of it is more than deserved. AI is transforming how we work. But here's what nobody wants to
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Retail Success Is a Chain Reaction. Data Tells You Where the Links Are Breaking. I've been saying for a while now that "experiential retail" has become one of the most overused and misunderstood terms in the retail industry. The brands that succeed don't just
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A few months ago, I wrote about how traditional trade area analysis is dead. Radius rings and demographic overlays can't capture the micro-market dynamics that actually drive retail performance. But here's what I've been thinking about since: if AI and dynamic location analytics
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The Rise of Prediction Markets as a CRE and Retail Data Source The CRE industry has traditionally relied on a familiar forecasting toolkit: historical sales data, comps, macroeconomic models, demographic data, and good old-fashioned gut instinct. That has changed recently with the introduction of more refined persona data, mobile
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"Experiential retail" is the most overused term in CRE right now...And I think we're using it wrong. Everyone talks about creating "experiences" for customers. Immersive moments. Instagram-worthy activations. The wow factor. But here's what I keep seeing: the wow fades.
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The industry has been obsessed with "experiential retail" for years. Destination shopping. Instagram moments. Dwell time. Meanwhile, convenience quietly drives more frequent traffic and more opportunities than any experience-driven concept ever will. The market is recognizing this: In late 2024, SITE Centers spun off its convenience retail
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Adults aren't buying toys. They're reshaping retail. The above photo is my oldest son's (29) lego city, called Bricklanta...a work in progress over the last 15 years. What started as a kid, has become a love of Lego that has lasted long into