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Valvoline in Alpharetta, GA with David Wright

Episode #: 080
Valvoline in Alpharetta, GA with David Wright

Guest: David Wright
Topics: Valvoline, retail development

Transcript:

Chris Ressa 0:01
This is retail retold the story of how that store ended up in your neighborhood. I’m your host, Chris ReSSA. And I invite you to join my conversation with some of the retail industry’s biggest influencers. This podcast is brought to you by DLC management.

Welcome to retail retold everyone today we have David Wright. David is a senior real estate manager at Valve valine. And David has been in the industry for 30 plus years, he spent time at Lowe’s home centers, McDonald’s bylo. And now he’s at Valvoline. He brings a wealth of knowledge and a lot of experience. And I’m happy to have him here. Welcome to the show, David.

David Wright 0:43
Thank you for having me, Chris. Thank you,

Ressa 0:45
David, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about who you are, where you’re from and what you’re up to these days.

Wright 0:52
Thanks, Chris. Yes, I have been in the business for 30 years I grew up in South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama is home I graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi, which at the time, there wasn’t a lot of schools that offered a real estate degree program. But southern was one of the schools that did and was able to get a formal education, real estate, came back to mobile. And then my first real job in site selection was Lowe’s home centers. And kind of they had been in the Carolinas actually, the balance of the time. 25 years, I really enjoyed real estate, I think, I don’t know, maybe not the only person but one of the few people when I well used to go to as CSCs and kind of someone that has stuck in the site selection, retail business for my entire career. And I think that’s attributable to really enjoying what I do. I’ve always enjoyed traveling. And you’ve always enjoyed going to New Towns and new places and trying to figure out, you know, where the best places to build a new facility. So very, very blessed.

Ressa 2:05
Awesome. Well, that’s great. So, you know, this been an interesting year and in, you’re still out there looking for new sites to build the Halloween location. So why tell us a little bit about what what is it that you’re out looking for these days? What are you doing these days? That’s a typical Valvoline Sure.

Wright 2:26
You know, I think a lot of what the real estate folks and Valvoline do we spend a lot of time educating landlords and, you know, cities and counties, you know, our business has really evolved over the years. Yes, we do change oil. But you know, we build a very nice professional looking building two bay, three bay. And, you know, I tell people, we are looking for the same type of real estate that the banks McDonald’s, Chipotle, those type users, the the destination C stores, we’re looking for a plus real estate, our typical average midline customer, prototypical customer is a young female mom, with young kids. So we really like being adjacent to the neighborhood, grocery store, dominant neighborhood, grocery and those repeat trips in and out. And a lot of times the the moms are the person that has the time to get the oil change during the day. So we really liked that we, our company finally has conveyed to Wall Street that we’re going to do 50 new ground up deals per year, over the next three or four years. We think that’s that’s probably a bottom number, conservative number, we think it’s going to probably go to 80 and the next few years, so very aggressive growth. And you know, we’re very excited and we have people all across the country. We have somebody out on the West Coast, somebody in Texas, somebody in the Midwest, somebody for the Deep South and I kind of handle the Mid Atlantic so we’re very, very aggressive. We’re looking for about an acre, we can probably get by on a little less than that. You know, depends on the sales forecast, we can be competitive on rents. We also will purchase you know, it’s hard to find somebody that will sell these days but we’re looking for a real estate and very, you know, active dominant retail nodes and hubs. And

Ressa 4:37
one of the things I find interesting is you guys have your own oil novoline Oil and that’s how you started right was with the valve Alene oil and then you guys moved into the the oil change centers that right,

Wright 4:50
exactly the we found out 40 years ago that the valve Lane had established a very strong brand with automotive have folks that started with do it yourselfers and then we realized, as you know, the two double income working couples, you know, proliferated, people had less time and propensity to work on their own cars. And so Verbling has been very aggressive with acquisitions of small chains, mom and pops. And that kind of built the base of the chain. And then actually going on three years ago, of Abilene, that Valvoline, Inc, was spun out from Ashland oil, which is a large International Chemical Company. And it allowed us to finally kind of when we’re in New York Stock Exchange publicly traded today, and it kind of gave us the freedom Vaseline to grow the VOC we were kind of a cash cow contributor to the chemical company. And, you know, we did some maintenance deals over the years that the chemical company owned us, but, you know, after we were spun off and went public, I really gave us the capital and you know, the we had the entire blocks of the country in front of us to go build out and that’s what we’re doing today is building the network out.

Ressa 6:18
And and the line of lines of business that Valvoline is in there in these, these oil change centers. And what do you call them? You mentioned a word vi IOC, the

Wright 6:28
AO C Valvoline. Instant oil change is the correct name, we kind of abbreviate it and say via OC, there’s three components of Abilene it’s the Voc of Abilene is an oil change, and we’re up. It’s both franchised, and corporate, I work with the corporate facilities. And we’re up around 1200 stores around numbers both franchise and corporate. We have, we call it the the North American business. And that’s the business that sells to the Walmarts targets auto zones. And to the do it yourself shops, so the mechanic repair businesses, and then we have an international business that we’re trying to grow, we’ve actually have a person in China and we’re over in China, and we, we have sold oil all over the world for probably the bulk of the existence of Aveling, 40 something years.

Ressa 7:27
I’m fascinated when someone has a line of business, and then they leverage that into a new line of business. And while it was long ago, I think the valve Alene story is interesting, because they started in the oil business and distributing oil to all these other businesses. And then, you know, went into these VOCs. And I think that’s really fascinating. If one that comes to mind to me, that you know, has doesn’t have the scale as you do. But there’s a big brand tide, and they started opening up dry cleaners, right on tide dry cleaners and doing that. And I find the concept. Interesting. And I think actually, you’re going to see more brands to connect with consumers start to do this, I think, especially if, if you were in a brand in a store and you were a quote unquote, wholesale business, and you sold your your goods to somebody and maybe now they have less stores and maybe one of the best ways for you to go is to get into retail and open up your own brand identity and sell direct to consumer and we now have some of these direct to consumer brands. And I think, you know, Valve Alene might have been ahead of the curve and direct to consumer the 40 years early you hear this word DTC all the time now and Vaseline did this 40 years ago.

Wright 8:45
Correct. And, you know, and stay tuned, there’s a lot of exciting things happening now that we’re, you know, pumped independent, publicly traded company, you know, the, the leadership of our company, I think not think is in the process of slowly pivoting our business more to the VO C where that becomes the dominant business that the front facing business that customers and investors see. And, you know, we’ll the, you know, the, the the, the North American business is extremely profitable, it’s just not a growth business, you know, selling to the mom and pops into the you know, the the the auto zones are those are not a product you know, a very fast growing business. So, we’re slowly pivoting to where the face of Abilene will be vo C and that’s in the process. We’re, we’re slowly we’re pitching our our business now. Vaseline is more of a service based business, you know, the service of changing someone’s oil. So you that’s in the process and hopefully will pay dividends over the next few years.

Ressa 9:54
We have a valuable lien not too far from Masek. Well we go do and They go into good job they send you they get you the contact information, they get all your coupons, and it’s contactless payment. And they actually one of the things that are interesting, no matter what vehicle you have, they put in your year, your miles, and it tells you what you should have had done to the vehicle by then and which is, you know, interesting, and they have that pulled up in seconds. And they can, you know, they can offer a lot of those services to you. And it’s pretty quick. And I think it’s a really cool concept, especially, I think, with all the DTC words that you hear in retail real estate, it’s, it’s one that I think is like 40 years ahead of the time they were doing DTC, and might not call themselves that, but before anyone was so pretty cool. For a long standing brand that’s been around for a long time, even way before that. 40 years. So really cool. Just one real estate question. I don’t know if you know, but you mentioned and I don’t know if there’s a range on a corporate valving lien What do you know what you’re seeing cap rates at today, for those that are selling?

Wright 11:12
corporates are in the five range? 5457? That’s the best we’ve seen so far. come across.

Ressa 11:19
Got it. Cool. Well, there’s really interesting insights on Vaseline and what’s going on there. Well, Dave, you actually have two stories today. The first one is about McDonald’s. Why don’t you tell us about that one? And the second one’s Valvoline? Where are we going? What location? Where are we going? What’s how

Wright 11:39
we’re going way back. And it’s a little small town and southwest Virginia, St. Paul, Virginia. Okay. I love to tell this story. And it’s, it’s not intended to be an indictment of all the planning and zoning people or city folks. But, you know, we showed up in St. Paul’s small little town, and wanting to build this was when I was with McDonald’s. And so we were having a hard time finding the site. And one of the best corners at the main lighted intersection was the city’s ballpark, softball Park. And so the conversation led to will What about the ballpark? And anyway, we the city worked with us hand in hand to deliver the ballpark, we actually in McDonald’s contributed some money to relocate the ballpark, it was a big enough track. And we were there. There’s a McDonald’s sitting there today. But you know, you just so rarely ever see, you know, cities working to come, you’re really trying to help out, and particularly when it involved, you know, a city softball Park to help relocate it. And, you know, they were interested in jobs and income and taxes. And the guy that was refreshing, you just so rarely see that today, you know, particularly in the QSR, and some of the smaller box players, you just, you know, a lot of folks don’t really like those users. And it was nice and nice. It was nice to see that. Working together.

Ressa 13:12
I think it’s interesting, because in corporate real estate, there’s, you know, most groups have research teams, and they can plot out which corners they want to be on in everywhere in the country. And sometimes the corner is the firehouse, and sometimes it’s this and sometimes it’s 17 parcels. And, you know, what I think is interesting is the the real estate team has to make a decision to say, am I going to spend the time to chase this down and pay the price? Is it worth it in the long run? Do I not do this market? Or do I work with my research guys and say, You know what, this corner is just not practical in the next foreseeable future. And it should be this corner over here. And I think that’s interesting in it from a development perspective and thinking it through and when it’s when it’s a municipal one, it is a it is definitely interesting. And it depends on the motives of that municipality in in in at that time. Right. You know, you mentioned QSR, and there’s a lot of places that have some drive thru moratoriums and things like that. But I think in a post pandemic world, you’re going to start to see you’re going to start to see some flexibility in that type of thing. I guess, you know, going back to that story, though, for a second. You go and you say I, this is the corner, it’s a ballpark. The little Leaguers of the world are not going to be happy with me. I might be able to provide burgers but I don’t have a spot for them to play ball. And so how does it start? You call you call the city?

Wright 14:52
We did. We worked with a broker that we had worked with, in this particular area of McDonald’s this region And, you know, made some initial contacts with the city ran down the city manager I have learned most city managers are fairly big decision making. I mean, they have councils they have to work with and other people, but ran the city city manager down had some meetings and, you know, he actually expressed apparently, you know, we worked at McDonald’s wasn’t the first group that had come in and inquire because it was a great corner at the main main intersection, and, you know, work through it, and, you know, had to make some commitments to, you know, in terms of, you know, some fencing and, you know, extra grading to kind of relocate to the, the park or the the field. But, yeah, it just started out and young didn’t really, through that whole process. Rarely. And I obviously, would have been a different story, I believe in possibly even a different ending, had we not been able to read was a big six or eight acre tract, and we just wanted to the front piece, and they had pulled a park up next to the kind of the main intersection. So we were able to push the ball field back on the back part of the parcel, but yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of people might not even ask, you know, you never know, and that’s a great lesson in this business, you know, you got to ask, you just never know, you have to ask, and

Ressa 16:17
do you think, today in today’s day and age, and you work for one big corporate, you know, corporate place, and, you know, public company? What do you think the reaction is today, to sites that are challenged like that, where there’s someone at the top going, I love this real estate, we got to figure this out? Are they gonna, we’re gonna kind of move the municipality and move a ballpark. And, you know, we got to figure out where to replace the ballpark. How are you? How do you see the landscape in corporate America today as it relates to that, because it’s a story I think I hear about, you know, back in the back in the day, but and, you know, we’re a developer, and we do some we do a lot of, you know, freestanding triple net lease development, and for a variety of tenants. And, you know, one of our specialties is assemblages, and we’re pretty good at the messy and we did a Walgreens and our Head of Development out Calgary did a Walgreens, where we combined 14 parcels and had a, you know, relocate residential tenants and did all that. And that was in recent time. That was a few years ago, but you don’t see that all too much anymore. I feel like he’s, you know, obviously, if there’s a vacant piece of land, and people want to build on it, that’s one thing, but you don’t see that nearly as much as I think, like, once upon a time, what’s your take on the corporate landscape and how corporate America views that today?

Wright 17:52
I think that, you know, the environment was city and county and I guess more of those folks becoming combative. And I hate to use that word or, you know, anti growth, and, you know, they don’t like to QSR is, I think it’s forced all of the retail chains to rethink, you know, their architecture, their their look, you know, the way the, the I call it, the new urbanism, pulling the buildings up, you know, closer to the street and putting the parking behind is, is as tough as that is in some businesses to do it that way. I think it’s made companies more flexible. i That’s my sense. You know, I think, you know, you see buildings that you know, are supposed to be at Chick fil A, and they, you know, you can basically make out the brand, but, you know, and I know for us it voc. We do some really attractive buildings, you know, brick and scene. Yeah, you know, standing seam metal roofs and, you know, gooseneck light fixtures and, you know, really, you know, really nice, even decorative, roll up garage doors. I mean, you know, you kind of you got to make that extra effort. And I think all retailers are kind of having to deal with that, you know, if they’re gonna get projects approved today.

Ressa 19:12
Yeah. And so you mentioned voc and even if it’s something less exciting than a ballpark Do you have a story of a deal where with a voc

Wright 19:22
we did a store in Alpharetta, Georgia which is one of the higher end north I know it Yeah. And and it was actually our first ground up in Atlanta and boy, we had to really it was o que te site que te the C store chain, it actually was great, great corner and a light. They had just relocated back down closer to Georgia 401 of the main arteries there in Atlanta for a bigger site. They were doing so much business I wanted a bigger site. And we really had to, you know, we had to save trees we, boy we just really had to you know All brick and we actually had a very good developer that helped us on that project. I think, you know, without his help, I don’t think we’d have got it across the finish line. But certainly Alpharetta was a tough it was a tough cookie. For sure. I know the

Ressa 20:15
market great market. And was was that a ground lease you did? Or build to suit lease?

Wright 20:20
It was a ground lease. We don’t do build us dudes. We haven’t gotten to that point yet. We’ve talked about it as a company, but it was a ground lease. Yes. 1515 year ground lease.

Ressa 20:29
So you’re doing a ground lease, you’re working with a developer and you are the broker? And probably you you identified that you wanted to be in that former QT. And, and so the developer had to go and buy it from the owner was the owner Qt or was it somebody else?

Wright 20:47
It was Qt and they actually were fairly financially stable. And they actually had already bought the site, they got out in front and when it sold, they had some local ties to keep or local real estate rep develop manager ties. And it actually already bought the site they were that that confident of it, you know, some somebody would would be interested in that location. So

Ressa 21:17
Oh, that’s so they went and bought the other site where they were going to move before they even disposed of the the existing site. Oh, they

Wright 21:23
bought the as soon as the store that that cutie relocated from they bought it as soon as it you know, before they even had any tenants, you know, or even anything nailed down. They bought that site, you know, pronto, right, when it went on the market, when Qt put it on the market? Oh, this

Ressa 21:40
is a developer bought it? You mean, right? Correct. Without any tenants just knew he would have somebody? Correct. And so how did you get when to the site? That’s interesting, because you don’t see that a lot. You don’t see developers just buying vacant properties on spec and hoping they have a tenant

Wright 21:54
interested in this trade area and wrote it. And we saw the vacant Qt, you know, as a far, you know, we used to get McDonald’s called it through the light on the right, you know, it was a corner. And just we knew from rotting the markets, you know, being there and being familiar with it, we wanted to be in that market.

Ressa 22:14
So So given the developer did that, I would imagine there was some competition for this site.

Wright 22:20
It was part of the issue was trying to get a couple of tenants on the side. And so we kind of had to work through that. But they were trying to develop a relationship with Vaseline. So once we expressed interest, they kind of hung with us. And we had to ask, we ended up doing several deals with this group. So it ended up being a good relationship.

Ressa 22:43
And okay, so when you say a couple of sentences, so you had one que te, but then they were going to build multiple pads on this site? Correct? Correct. Exactly. And you you were one of them. And then once you you strike a deal with the developer, now you have the challenge of getting municipal approvals, correct. That typically requires an entire you can’t if they’re going to redevelop the whole site, typically, you can’t just go in there with Well, I got Vaseline here. And then I’m going to do something over here, you have to have like the whole site plan buttoned up

Wright 23:16
right into the, you know, they were thinking Qs star and so the early on, they had laid in, you know, QSR is the next door neighbor and kind of went went down that road on the early talks with the city and actually didn’t get a lot of pushback, you know, we we just had to jump through the hoops it was just a difficult so about a slam the door in our face. So we just had to, you know, check all the checks off the box check

Ressa 23:45
and, and where the city was particular was in the aesthetics of the building.

Wright 23:50
Yes, yes. heavy heavy. I can’t remember exactly the number but what this person would normally do on landscaping, it was three times you know normal pad development you know with landscaping and buffers and you know, mature certain caliber trees it was extremely expensive

Ressa 24:13
and has it has it raised raised issue internally and you guys said you know we keep dealing with this issue with every municipality we need to change the look and feel of what the exterior of our building and land is that occurred

Wright 24:26
we do we have a family of buildings, you know, and I we generally start with our basic Eephus building that’s kind of our basic building like still attractive building but it’s the ephah Spanish and and then we have a serie we have a Southwest load building that kind of ties into Phoenix and the Southwest out that that way. You know and then we have a full brick building, you know, 100% all brick it’s a very attractive building off It costs a little bit more to build. But, you know, we can certainly actually, the day up in Northern Virginia, it looks like you know, the city wants us or municipality wants us to do a brick building. So we certainly can do that and are willing to do that.

Ressa 25:17
And you have these bays in the bays? Do you go underground or the guys going underground? Right, because when I’ve gone to Vaseline, they’re underground. And they come into my oil that way they do.

Wright 25:29
It’s part of our service model that we have, you know, really sharpened over the last 30 or 40 years, we do a 10 foot pit under the the building. And, you know, that’s where our we don’t have any underground tanks or just in the tin. Bank, we call it the basement under the building. And yes, it’s part of our service process. The folks go under the car and remove the oil, it goes into the recycle bins. And you know, they come and get it every couple of days. And it goes Yes, recycled all that that used motor oil is recycled. But yes, we we we are soil tests are very important. We’re doing digging a 10 foot hole and then building a building on top of that. So it’s very, the soil reports are very, very important to us.

Ressa 26:22
That’s fascinating. Anything else that happened in Alpharetta that you think is interesting. It’s very interesting. I mean, the whole development piece that you wanted to be in Alpharetta, the developer bought the Qt site without tenants. And then you ended up being one of the tenants because it was a market that you had identified and you had to go through the hoops with the municipality I think, you know, that’s one of the the blessings and the curses with commercial real estate is that every municipality is different, which creates opportunities and challenges across the country. Right when, you know, when legislation federally changes and, you know, from it doesn’t necessarily impact local municipalities in the same way across the country. So

Wright 27:07
well, and I’ll tell you one little tidbit that ultimately, you know, you’re in coming from McDonald’s where there was 14,000 Us stores and everything was a second or third or fourth, you know, surgical insertion. You know, Verbling had lots of markets, Dallas and Phoenix and Atlanta, they had no stores. So we were actually just, you know, a lot of people even developers, brokers didn’t know a whole lot about you know, Vaseline. I mean, we were more of a Midwest Indianapolis mini at New York, you know, more of a Midwest company until we got this you know, we we became a free standard public company going on three years ago. So, the Alpharetta ended up actually being a blessing in disguise not it was difficult. But for our first store, it was probably one of the best looking stores in the market ultimately. So we were able to send other development like planning and zoning people because I always say I want to go see one and so to finally have a store in the market open that not only brokers and developers and other planning people could go and actually see that was nice, you know, that was above the norm in terms of the look and the feel will actually pay dividends it really helped to have that first store to be really super nice when you had a great intersection, great trade area and all the things that you look for it just helped reinforce you know, the type of real estate and markets that you know, the company was looking for. So it was tough and but it ended up really being a kind of a backdoor really helped us in the market, you know, getting going first.

Ressa 28:51
So pivot away. Those are two great stories really thank you for sharing both interesting the ballpark for McDonald’s and then the the old q t and Alpharetta, Georgia that turned into be a corner piece as you entered the Atlanta market. So really a cornerstone piece. What are you seeing out there from land is are you seeing it feels like to me right now. Every time I go on LinkedIn or something like that, every new concept is a new drive thru concept. And it seems like demand for the type of real estate you’re looking for is really taken off at least anecdotally. What are you seeing out there as you’re looking for space?

Wright 29:30
Yeah, it is. I mean, I would love to say and I no one ever would wish the pandemic on anybody, any company, any anybody anything. We thought back in March, April, you know, we might see some opportunities to take advantage. And our leadership told us to not back off, you know, even in the depths of the pandemic, we were deemed essential our company was our business. So we were able to stay open through it. And although Our sales were down with people not out as much. But we, you know, it’s like I’ve told people forever, the people that own the best real estate generally know, they have the best real estate. And either air, most of them have deep pockets and are able to hang on to it, and they’re gonna get through whether it’s a pandemic or, you know, a downturn in the economy, whatever it is. That was a long answer to say, Yeah, I mean, it’s as competitive as ever, in our decides that we’re looking for, you know, the QSR ours are back, you know, the ones that would drive throughs you know, the C stores are back, you know, some new concepts, so, and then our competitors, you know, take five and express in certain markets, Jiffy Lube, you know, our back expanding a little bit, you know, probably not to the level that we are, but so, yeah, I, the, all the sights are tough now. And, you know, it’s a lot of folks looking, that would be my, my perception today are,

Ressa 31:08
yeah, and have you guys, have you done, like, a free standing building, you know, in a grocery anchored center, and, you know, where the landlord went and got consents from people where maybe your use wasn’t allowed, and things like that, if you’ve done those things, we have

Wright 31:25
actually, actually, we opened a store, about maybe three, four weeks ago in coming Georgia, one of the kind of close to the Milford area, another really nice area, and it’s a pad to a Kroger. And we had to go to Kroger and some of the other uses to get get some approvals. And, you know, Kroger and the grocery stores have not been as difficult, we run into an issue with the targets, the Kohl’s, some of those types of users are a little bit more difficult. And for some reason, just, you know, really won’t give our use the time of day because it’s automotive or oil change, they, you know, unfortunately won’t read, you know, a little deeper and really try to understand what we’re doing. But, yeah, we generally, generally don’t have a lot of trouble with the grocery, folks. But as you get into Target less so with Walmart, sometimes you have Walmart offers oil changes as part of their automotive service center that they have in some of the stores, sometimes that’ll be a problem if they have an oil change facility. But um, yeah, we do we do, you know, run into the the old automotive use are strict. And it’s tough sometimes.

Ressa 32:47
Going back a second, you mentioned the the pandemic and sales were down, have they returned? You know, my expectation would be that it might have been tough in a work from home environment, people aren’t traveling as much they might not need oil changes, is that fair?

Wright 33:03
They were down by and I’m just round numbers 50% At the worst of the pandemic, but they have come back and we’re close to back to 100% Thank goodness we are people really are still you know, what their automobiles are, you know, people really, particularly when times are tough, they want to take care of their automobile. And that’s what we have found people are still getting old changes. But yeah, we we were down for sure. No doubt about it, you know, particularly in the peak of the lock downs, you know, just people were not out. But we we we did a lot of service vehicles, police departments fire, you know, those type first first responder type vehicles we really tried to, to work with those folks during the pandemic and yeah, we we got through that we actually posted our 14th consecutive year of comp store sales increases it’s it’s one of the we’re the pop people don’t really think that because just you know, they think about the Walmart’s and targets and altos but until the pandemic last year, let’s just go back and say 20 2019 We were the top two or three Vaseline and comp store sales increases over a 10 year period. We were right up there with Alta and some of the major retailers and luckily, our sales came back enough we just posted our 14th consecutive year of comp store sales.

Ressa 34:33
Wow, what were you coughing up? I didn’t even check shame on me. What were you coughing up over?

Wright 34:39
Three or four, you know, but it has been double digit. It’s still positive. It’s not where we want it to be. You know, we’ve had literally double digit sales increases over the last. I want to say the last eight years were double digit and then we got into the pandemic and we’re around four or five Buy think now but certainly a positive comp store sale. You know, it is it is a great trend.

Ressa 35:07
How did the North American business do during the pandemic in the beginning?

Wright 35:11
It’s it’s good. They have restructured a lot of that business and I’m not an expert in all of that and how they marketed and price it and the bulk pricing and but they have really kind of restructured how they operate and taken some cost out. And yeah, it’s done. Done. Oh, done. Well, it’s done. Done. Okay. It’s hung in there for sure.

Ressa 35:34
Great. Well, that’s good stuff. Well, listen, this is this has been great. I really appreciate the time. I now I’m going to take you to the the last part of our segment here you ready we call retail wisdom.

Yeah, yeah. First question what is your best piece of commercial real estate advice

Wright 36:03
on commercial real estate if you can I think long term it’s always going to be in the in the right location is going to be a great great investment.

Ressa 36:13
All right, thank you sage advice. Number two, fan favorite. What extinct retailer Do you wish would come back from the dead

Wright 36:25
wow I guess it’s technically this test tough. I Sears is not dead completely. I don’t guess but um, yeah, I always is. The kid enjoyed shopping at Sears and they’ve just had a tough time. Had a really tough time. Yeah, they have.

Ressa 36:49
All right. Last question. You’re from South Carolina. I’m on fanatics website and I’m looking at a Trevor Lawrence jersey. What is that retail for on fanatics website?

Wright 37:04
Well, I’m gonna take a guess. $160 I don’t know. Well, it’s regularly

Ressa 37:11

  1. But with their offer code, you can get it for 7999 But thank you for playing Dave. There you go.

Wright 37:20
I learned something. I’m I don’t buy many jerseys. That was that was a that was a guess.

Ressa 37:29
Awesome. Well, listen, this was great, man. I really appreciate it.

Wright 37:33
Absolutely, man. I wrote again, thanks a zillion for the invite. I appreciate it. Thank you, Bob.

Ressa 37:41
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