While you may see headlines about more big-box retailers shutting their doors, there are still opportunities in physical retail. Forty-four percent of consumers still prefer to shop in-store, according to the State of Consumer Behavior report. The customer experience is a top reason consumers visit brick-and-mortar stores, although engaging with the product and avoiding shipping costs are influencing factors as well.
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The fact is, despite the popularity of online shopping, there remains a place for brick-and-mortar retail. If considering whether to sell in-person, remember: Your store&#;s location has a significant impact on whether or not you experience growth in a new storefront setting.
If uncertain where to start, here are 10 factors to consider to find the right space for your brick-and-mortar store.
When considering a space for your physical store, put yourself in the shoes of a customer who may have never heard of your company.
Ask yourself the following questions and answer them from a customer&#;s perspective:
The answers can help you assess the right location (taking into consideration retail marketing benefits such as curb appeal and accessibility) and approach to providing the best customer experience. Knowing the product you are selling, how a retail space can help you sell it, and ultimately, what the customer wants and needs is key to finding retail space.
Dustin Kroft, principal and lead designer for modern shelving company Kroft, took this in consideration when adding in-person selling so his customers could have an immersive experience. &#;People still have reservations about spending $800 on a shelving unit without seeing it first,&#; says Kroft. &#;This became a big motivation for also having a brick-and-mortar store for the brand.&#;
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You can leverage analytics and reporting tools to identify the demographics surrounding your new retail space&#;s location. Doing so is important for your business, as collecting hard data provides insight into the ages, locations, shopping habits, gender, and living status (student, retired, single, or married, for example) of your customers or potential customers.
At this stage, also answer these questions about nearby businesses:
If the answers align with your business, leasing a space for your store in this area is likely a good fit.
Solutions from companies like Esri and Easy Analytic Software Inc.(EASI), and tools like Audience Insights, available through the Shopify store, can offer easy ways to find this type of information. Esri&#;s web and mobile app, ArcGIS Business Analyst, for example, provides location-driven market insights and affordable ways to evaluate a location&#;s nearby demographic.
Other resources include your local chamber of commerce, census bureau, and libraries.
Understanding traffic patterns is critical to any retail business because it influences the location and long-term financial success of your store. Having steady foot traffic can increase sales and revenue, and continuously studying retail foot traffic data helps you determine the best place for your store when finding retail space.
&#;Opening a store is not a set-it-and-forget-it exercise. Customer behavior evolves, as do traffic patterns and market conditions,&#; explains Rebekah Kondrat, founder and CEO of Kondrat Retail. &#;The more a brand can pay attention and listen to feedback, the more likely it&#;ll be to make the adjustments needed to succeed.&#;
If this is your first brick-and-mortar store, consider not opening in a brand new development, since it will be more difficult to collect historical data on store traffic patterns. And consider the drivers of foot traffic in the area&#;being near an anchor store may help you attract external foot traffic, while being tucked away in a low-traffic area of a popular shopping area may limit your store&#;s visits. Public transit can also drive foot traffic.
Also, consider accessibility:
The number of parking spaces you need for your business mostly varies depending on the state or province. It&#;s best to visit your city or county&#;s website to find specific information on parking requirements as it relates to your type of business and location.
Talking to neighborhood business owners helps provide even more data on foot traffic, sales, safety, and more.
Use these questions to interview your potential neighbors:
Kroft took opening a retail store as a way to directly connect with the community: &#;I wanted to connect with our community directly, and establishing a physical space where we could showcase our products, host exhibitions and events, and support other local makers was a great way to bridge that gap.&#;
Additionally, communicating with neighboring businesses can unlock unforeseen opportunities. For example, you may team with a fellow retailer to set up a shop-in-shop.
In finding retail space, consider where your competitors are located&#;being nearby may prove a benefit. That&#;s because you can tap into a strategy known as clustering. According to the Journal of Small Business Strategy, clusters of similar businesses operating in close proximity can add to a business&#;s knowledge base and encourage market competition.
It may also help in attracting more customers, which, in return, can increase sales. This also helps ensure that you&#;re choosing a location that your demographic is already visiting and that suits their needs.
Data Axle Reference Solutions is one resource for small business owners looking for the ideal location, and it&#;s easy to use. Applications include mapping capabilities that help you identify your competitors, their company data, and additional consumer data in the area.
Make sure you understand the rules, policies, and procedures related to your business and the potential location. This includes researching and ensuring you are in compliance with any zoning regulations. Zoning laws define what is and isn&#;t allowed in an area as it relates to a specific level of use.
Ask about the property&#;s zoning laws before signing a lease. You can access this information from the department of city planning (or equivalent office) for your respective area.
If you&#;re in love with the location but discover the zoning isn&#;t compatible with your business, you can apply for a change of zoning. To do this, visit your local zoning commission to ask for a rezoning petition. Be prepared with the following information:
The steps to apply, fees, and time commitment for rezoning vary by city.
Your local city hall is another resource to gain more knowledge on any regulations that may affect your business operations, parking requirements, signage, and more.
As a new owner (or renter) of a brick-and-mortar storefront, you face many new responsibilities&#;from overseeing store operations to managing retail inventory&#;in addition to your existing (or planned) online shop.
Another consideration is the commute time. A long commute can take a toll on your health and productivity, both of which can affect your success. Take steps to preserve your mental health and avoid burnout, as your well-being and work performance are interconnected.
Research shows that long commutes hinders productivity.
When viewing a potential location for your store, space is a major consideration. You need to know how much square footage is needed for selling your products and setting up visual merchandising. Factor in the amount of space needed for an office area, break room, and storage&#;these design elements are a key part of your retail store layout.
If you choose a location with plans to grow, then adopt a growth strategy early on to help prepare for any potential business pain points that come with scaling a business. This can include having the right level of financing and staffing support.
&#;Staffing is always going to be one of the biggest challenges for any retailer,&#; says Mikey Moran, CEO of Private Label, retailer of sneakers, sports, and travel bags.
Create a budget so you can track expenses and revenue and determine affordability when making cost decisions. For example, if there are any repairs or renovations needed for your chosen space, these upgrade or improvement costs would be included in your budget. The price tag of leasing your commercial space or equipment lease would be included as well. Additional cost considerations include lighting, hardware, fixtures, and even an outside canopy for hosting special outdoor events.
Remember, aim to overestimate your rent, utilities, and supply needs when creating a budget&#; that way, you have a savings cushion if there are unexpected expenses. Equally important is to implement a contingency plan that includes a financial safety net.
Finally, if seeking a cost-effective way to test the market before settling in permanently, consider a pop-up shop. The costs can vary, but can start as low as $2,000. A pop-up can be a good way to generate brand buzz and direct potential customers back to your ecommerce site for more information, including details about your soft opening and in-store products.
Before signing a lease agreement, examine it thoroughly and consider tapping the expertise of a real estate or legal expert who can decipher any hard-to-understand language. Depending on your level of comfort, you may choose to negotiate the lease yourself.
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Information to review in the lease includes:
PRO TIP: If you&#;re opening a brick-and-mortar storefront for the first time, you may want to consider a shorter-term lease.
FURTHER READING: Need a little help understanding your lease? Read up on our guidelines to negotiating a retail business lease.
Finding retail space for your business&#;s brick-and-mortar store includes taking inventory of everything from your ideal customers and business environment to the square footage of your physical location and the fine print on your lease. Above all else, remain devoted to making a calculated, well-researched decision to aid in your business&#;s long-term success and growth.
There are several features that make a good retail property, including:
The depth of a retail space varies based on the products you are selling, the anticipated foot traffic, and projected sales. Ultimately, the depth will be determined by your retail store layout, but a recommended depth is 70 feet.
Maximize retail space by taking advantage of your vertical shelving, optimizing display space for bestselling products, and measuring your sales per foot to assess whether you are making the most out of your available retail space.
By Multidev Technologies · PUBLISHED February 28,
Product management is one of the most important operational concerns in retail. If you don&#;t manage your inventory effectively, you risk having tons of shrinkage and losses, which consumes your profits, spending countless hours searching for your products, and wasting time and resources on other activities that negatively impact your bottom line. Effective product management is critical to retail profitability. You need to follow some product management best practices to achieve your goal.
Here are 10 product management best practices that agile retailers can follow and manage their products:
1. Analyze the Market
Profitable stores have well-planned retail marketing strategies and campaigns that promote products in a targeted manner. This requires extensive research not only on the item itself but also on the market and competitors.
A thorough study listing the strengths and weaknesses of your product plays an important role in knowing the sustainability of the product. Therefore, it is imperative to use the best product management services to get maximum returns. As retailers are the last phase of the supply chain, they interact directly with customers and are responsible for providing impactful promotions and desired products. While product-market fit is essential for rapid adoption and growth, a complete understanding of the business is equally important for long-term product success.
2. Identifying true customer behavior and needs
Never ask customers what they want; observe what they need. Capture new ideas through customer feedback or internal channels such as support or sales. But be careful not to iterate with all the feedback that reaches you. While customers can often describe the pain they are experiencing, they may not be able to articulate the solution.
Product telemetry, the amount of time a user spends on a certain product page, can be a vital source for understanding how customers interact with a product. Without observing actual customer behavior, product managers may pursue faulty assumptions and ultimately create products that don&#;t really solve customer problems.
3. Monitor price changes
How you price each product determines how many units you will sell, which will determine your level of profitability on those items. Large retailers have enough challenges with payroll, managing multiple vendors, and operations. One area of operations over which you have much more control than you think is price changes.
With the right tools, you can continuously monitor sales prices, special offers, discounts, and promotions and keep your ever-changing prices under control. With ChainDrive, price management is easier, more versatile, and more efficient across the chain.
4. Categorize your merchandise properly
An effective product management solution allows you to define your product categories and place each product in the right category for easy organization and access. You can establish your own attributes for your products. After all, every retail business is different.
5. Strategic Product Management
A significant portion of the retail industry is unorganized and needs strategic product management to meet consumer demands in the right way. That includes your product vision and goals.
Strategic product management includes identifying market and product opportunities and goals, understanding sales objectives, deploying resources, auditing the business environment to bring efficiency, integrating front and back-end operations, and thorough category planning and management.
6. Keep an eye on the analytics
Effective retail analytics is more than just knowing how much of each product you have in stock; it&#;s one of the most important aspects of managing a retail chain. You need to have an eye on the history of the products as well as their current status. A strong analytics system allows you to manipulate the data in a way that facilitates better management. You need to track each SKU, analyze your inventory levels, and forecast how much of each product you will need from season to season. And you need to be able to do this from any level in your organization.
7. Seamless inventory management
Real-time inventory status makes inventory visible regardless of the location. Seamless inventory management between stores or businesses is fully integrated with accounting to eliminate potential human error in data transfer.
Whether you are transferring goods from warehouse to warehouse, store to store, or warehouse/store to store, you need to be able to track and control all your transfers in real-time, so you know where your product is.
8. Centralize product management
Holding your inventory management practices at the department level increases your level of inefficiency. You&#;ll have a much better understanding of your product situation if you can see all of your purchases, assignments, transfers, distributions, and more at a glance. Consolidate all your data attributes into a powerful matrix so you can manage your products more efficiently. Centralize your product management system so you can manage all parts of it more effectively and efficiently.
9. Choose the right time
Retail is about selling the right product at the right time. To sell your products to the target audience, it is important that they come across your product. With the rise of e-commerce, timing has become even more important.
Reduce the time to value for customers to less than an hour. The best product managers have the technical knowledge and deep understanding of their product&#;s technology stack to design simple and easy onboarding processes for critical customer use cases. Creating these short integration processes allows customers to quickly see the value of the product, which drives adoption and usage.
A retail product manager who uses the right mix of product, customer data, and management skills needs to deliver a show to the consumer. You must plan, execute and deliver your product and its functionality to the user at the right time.
10. Build a dedicated team
Creating the right products at the right time requires coordination with multiple teams, including development, marketing, sales, support, and design. You need to be in frequent contact with everyone who impacts the product and customer experience to make sure you&#;re on the right track and not duplicating efforts.
Product management involves more than just ordering the right product from the right supplier. It involves managing your inventory from the time you place the order until it leaves for your customer.
As the pace of technological development accelerates and software solutions continue to play an increasing role in all facets of life, the development of a best-in-class product management function becomes increasingly important. Building product management functionality allows businesses to unleash the maximum potential of their software development capabilities, fully capitalize on the return on their software investments, and ultimately improve their business results.
ChainDrive product management software provides functional, easy-to-use, centralized tools to make your operation more profitable and efficient so that you can manage all stages of your product lifecycle in real time. With features that have been requested and developed by working with retailers to find solutions to the problems and pain points, they face every day.
If you&#;d like to learn more about retail product management best practices, tools, and techniques, check out our blog or request a free online demo to speak with one of our product management software experts.
The company is the world’s best retail store product management supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.