Top 5 Retail Trends in 2021
Guest: Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl, John Dee
Topics: Retail trends, omni-channel retail
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 two guests, we have John D. And Stephanie Shriver of place wise, John is the president of place wise and Stephanie is the SVP of global marketing, excited to have them here and get their take. Welcome to the show, John and Stephanie.
Stephanie Shriver-Engdahl 0:39
Thank you for having us, Chris.
John Dee 0:41
Thanks, Chris. Nice to be here. Awesome.
Ressa 0:45
So So John, Stephanie, why don’t you each John, why don’t you go first and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. And what place wise is
Dee 0:53
sure happy to start with place wise, price wise, provides digital services to shopping centers around the world. So we started off almost 20 years ago in the States as providing just saying, Hey, your shopping center, you should have a website to get on the web. And that evolved into like email programs back then there were no email programs, there was nobody signing up for programs, nobody marketed that way. That evolved and evolved into digital content, and social and mobile and effectively now the full stack of digital technology. My background prior to coming into the shopping center business with that was I was at a company called MCI Communications a million years ago, for those who’ve been around when people actually cared about the cost of making a phone call, which is kind of crazy. Now, think about it. Six and a half billion dollar marketing budget or consumer phone calls that we had aren’t as good. Yeah, on a $6 billion business line. But yeah, that was I saw I came out of that technology. And MCI was really key because we had a guy named Vint Cerf, who now was at Google, but he was one of the original developers at DARPA that didn’t develop the internet protocol. So I was on his team at MCI when we were starting our internet services. And that just expanded. And here I am, somehow, in the shopping center industry 20 years later. Wow. Stephanie,
Ressa 2:27
who’s Stephanie Shriver, what do you what do you do?
Shriver-Engdahl 2:30
I’m an original mall rapper back in the day. And Tysons Corner center was my stomping ground before it was as glamorous as it is today. And I’ve spent most of my adult career in the shopping center industry in many different roles from marketing director to VP of Digital Strategy was the first one in the industry. And then I moved out of the shopping center industry into technology with mobile location analytics when it was first introduced in this country. So and then I’ve been with place wise, as a customer and a collaborator for probably 20 of those years. So very, very closely tied to place wise, even when I was working for developers.
Dee 3:23
We just talked her down at an ICSE event in San Diego, I remember. We said that that Stephanie from forest. Then we we acted like we were buying beers next to him literally. That’s amazing. So today,
Ressa 3:43
you know, what is place wise, focused on right now.
Dee 3:47
Let me take that stuff. We digital transformation is this huge thing that’s going on literally every industry. You know, March good marketing, when it has gone through it, you hear all these references Mar tech and tech, retail tech is huge. And it is really this entire supply chain that literally goes from factory in Asia or wherever the factory is the shipping to the logistics track of it into the supply chain into the store into the store into store marketing. And at the end of that is a distribution point is a retailer. And that the digital transformation everyone is going through is very thorough, it’s top to bottom and it’s taken a long time. It’s easy to jump in and do email marketing in 2005. Not a problem. Very doable, and it’s it’s evolved and it’s emerged and it’s matured. But today, we’re with COVID we’re seeing this accelerate even more and things that we would prognosticate about being out in five or 10 years. Like real time inventory, right, this is all of a sudden a big deal. And you can see that as we went through COVID He was ready for digital transformation and for the changes that COVID brought, and who wasn’t. And I use my example I’ve used elsewhere but I it’s real and it’s personal. And it’s all somebody like a retail like a Best Buy. They turned up curbside, it seemed overnight. Right? They just took in store bought this buy online pick up in store, and they put it out to the curb. And you drove up. And we were all there because they were out of inventory. Our my local Best Buy didn’t have anything that I needed. It didn’t have monitors didn’t have webcams didn’t get microphones, all that sold out in the first couple of weeks. And the reason was, you could go online and drive up, you text them, you say I’m in stall number four, and the guy brings it out really dropped in your trunk and he drove away. Right? And it was super simple. Same thing did not happen at a retailer. A big home goods one I mentioned names here if I’m picking on him, I mean, Bed Bath and Beyond. Right? We broke a coffee pot, like second week into COVID locked down, right? So we needed we I wanted to, I want a coffee the next day. So I want to go get one I know they have them in stock at my local store. They’re completely shut down. Right? Unable to do that. And I know that as a company, they have wept and put a lot more focus on digital transformation. And so that this is like a personal story that we’re seeing. So how has that impacted how we’re working today, shopping centers and retailers are talking about e commerce that’s been delivered from the local store from the local mall, not just curbside, but delivery and in store, pickup the whole range of things, whatever consumers want. So we’re working a lot on that not just getting up a website or just sending out some emails to promoted door. We
Shriver-Engdahl 6:53
sorry, Chris, I was just gonna say we sort of live in that gap between physical and digital retail in Britain. And that gap, obviously is getting closer and closer. But that’s sort of our our happy place. That’s where we live. And that’s where we believe that we bring the most value.
Ressa 7:12
To who, though the retailer or to
Unknown Speaker 7:15
developers?
Shriver-Engdahl 7:16
I would say both, wouldn’t you, John,
Dee 7:19
we work with both. But our primary customer is the developer. Darko can include all the big mall REITs, and a lot of the guys because it’s moved down what the another trend we’re seeing is pushing. Yes, a big regional Shopping Center has had for a long time, a very strong digital web presence, and email marketing, all those things that’s coming down to your local strips, and how you can be available, how you can be available for search, making sure that your retailers are found in local
Ressa 7:48
without saying that it’s everything digital, but like what are they hiring you to do?
Shriver-Engdahl 7:53
Well, I think in the past, as John said, it was mostly focused on marketing, and web presence. I think now we are in a space where we are working with landlords on getting to know who their customers are, because now we can measure things and we can know things that we were never able to do before. And we can do it relatively inexpensively considering what that sort of endeavor would have taken a long time ago. So I think that’s one of the areas I think when I talked about us living in that that gap between physical and digital retail being our happy place. I feel like that’s where we are now developing products to help shopping centers and malls evolve into what they look like in the future and what role they serve. And when I said I think we help both retailers and landlords. We believe and I don’t want to, I don’t want to steal your thunder, John. But we believe that there’s a really great opportunity for shopping centers in general, not just malls and big shopping centers, but shopping centers in general, to become more active players in that E commerce and E commerce fulfillment piece of it. So we do that. And then we’re also working with landlords now on trying to streamline communication and support for retail tenants. And that’s again, in the neighborhood center, Community Center, big box regional. And there are lots of reasons why that’s important. In some of those cases, it’s because there aren’t any mall management staff or shopping center staff on on property. And we want to make sure that we’re communicating with our tenants and making sure they feel heard and taking care of operational issues as they happen. And then in malls, you know, people are bringing in more local cool fun retailers but those smaller retailers need a lot of support. They don’t have Have the marketing structure or dollars or budgets are people necessary to get the sort of support and awareness in their market. So in bigger shopping centers, we streamline content being provided by tenants, to those landlords, change channels of communication to make sure they have the customers that they need. So we’re very busy, Chris, very, very busy.
Dee 10:26
Let me break that down to products, though. So for a shopping center, we can put you on the web, there’s a website, you can sign up for an email program on there, you can sign up for a text messaging program, all the content that you could find on that website would be available over Wi Fi. On the back end, we would gather all of that information. And we would aggregate that and create datasets. So you’ve got all your digital touch points, because a shopper could get up. They could see an ad for the shopping center. They could click on that ad, they can look at things all that information can be aggregated together, and then used to deliver a better service. Does that make sense?
Ressa 11:08
You mentioned location analytics, are you guys doing? Like geofencing like place or AI does and things like that?
Dee 11:17
Absolutely. We do some similar things to that. Where we doing we’re doing, you know, sort of trade area analyses around location. Our focus heretofore has really more been around. What do you deliver to the consumer when they ask for that help? Because we believe that one of the things that landlords need to do is establish a relationship with the consumer. In the past, it was all between the brands and the consumer. And it’s still largely is, however, as leases changed, you know, from one day to one month to one week to one year leases, pop ups as tenants go and come and go. It’s important for the landlord to have a relationship with the consumers in his area and use that relationship to better the relationship he has with his tenants drive more of those people into the demo. Got it. Okay. Very cool. So
Ressa 12:13
you guys are seeing a lot what’s happening, you guys are global, you’re seeing a lot what’s going on all over. Today, we’re going to talk about the top five, you know, retail trends as you see it in 2021. So why don’t you take us away and start us off? John, what’s number five here?
Dee 12:37
Well, I was I’d start I said it before I’m gonna start. Digital Transformation is the big one. Right? So I’ll go in that order. Right? That’s a big one. We want to talk about that.
Ressa 12:46
Yeah, sure. Tell me. So when you say digital transformation, you know, give me the the if you’re gonna give me the punchline of what digital transformation means to you.
Dee 12:56
It’s baking in and folding in the digital capabilities of digital, whether that be marketing, communications, whether that be tenant communications, we literally, if you’ve been inside a regional shopping center, security guard walks around and gets people to sign off on stuff, right during the day, they need to see the manager, all these manual processes are becoming digital. And people expect that. So you’re building apps, and we’re building an app to allow people the management to communicate directly with store management that communicate with second key people say, Hey, your store is not open. You should get down here. These are kind of things that are real world that happened. So it’s that process of digitizing, sort of the shopping center business, the retailers are going to are already digitizing, right, they know it they can see the writing on the wall. They’ve done it. The landlord needs to jump on board with that and not be separate. Jeff, would you add more to that? No, I think I didn’t really yeah, do stack at one go.
Shriver-Engdahl 14:03
We’re number four, we’re going up to the most people go up right like the countdown press.
Ressa 14:07
You got it. Alright, so
Shriver-Engdahl 14:09
number four for me is consume consumer expectation of a shopping experience being one holistic experience. I think we were experiencing that before. Like COVID was the gasoline on the fire. And we have to play catch up ball in physical retail. Consumers want to be able to be like Don, they want to be able to pick it up curbside if they want to. And we saw that it’s not just going to be a nice, a nice thing to have, but it’s a necessity in certain certain times. So I would say consumer expectation accelerating.
Dee 14:53
They want it when they want it where they want it how they want it. You know, just the customer is king and they’re more control, they’ve never been more in control. So they if you don’t want to give it to him, no problem. I’ll get it down the road. Number three, John. Ah, so I think it’s those those means of fulfillment and delivery, right? So this curbside thing is not going away, we’ve found that to be incredibly convenient, whether COVID goes away, or we all live with tranquilly. And it’s not a problem anymore, that function will still stay there. And that is sort of maybe a branch of consumer expectations. But I don’t think that’s going away. And for restaurants and people in that business, always been pickups never been a problem. always done it. So it was an easy transition for them. It’s the digitization of that. So customer is arriving now the opposite of delivery, when you order a delivery, you know, chose the car coming to your house, right on the on the little delivery app. The opposite side of that is a Chris Ross’s arriving, and he’s going to be here in three minutes, get out there and be waiting at the curb when he shows up. That’s the kind of customer that you are. And so we’re seeing I see that as a trend right now. Awesome. And delivery as well as you know, local delivery from the local store. Same day. Got it?
Ressa 16:19
Yeah, that clearly. Being able to communicate with your customers, and have them shop both physically and digitally, is paramount. So I
Dee 16:34
I certainly
Ressa 16:36
I certainly understand. And I think that is a trend that’s only going to accelerate and amplify in 2021.
Dee 16:44
The shopper doesn’t separate these buy in from the gap. Right? He doesn’t care if it’s on the web, he’s gonna return it to the store, going to exchange it at the store. Once it brought outside, he wants it mailed to his house. And good brands are very aware of that. Got it? What’s number two?
Shriver-Engdahl 17:06
I’m ready, Chris, I’m ready for it. Go for it. Well, I think this is a big one really. Landlords realizing retail tenants as a constituency, right. So we’ve always been really good at making sure that we’re taking care of customers, I think, malls do a really pretty good job of that and shopping centers in general. But we sort of signed the lease, and then we kind of say, Okay, we’re good for five years, and we may see them at recon or whatever, our retailers. But I feel like during COVID, it really highlighted sort of this gap, again, between landlords and tenants, retail tenants working together, and making that easy. We saw lots of negotiations going on. They were must, right, it wasn’t it wasn’t necessarily something that we have any of us wanted to do. But we saw a lot of that happening. And just being really more as a partnership between landlords and, and retail tenants, I see a lot more possibility. For more value add there, once we get over the basics, like being able to make sure somebody read something or RSVP for a meeting, or got whatever notification they needed. Once we get sort of those housekeeping issues, the low hanging fruit taken care of which I think we have really good as Don was talking about tools like mobile applications that can make it super easy for everyone. I feel like there’s also then data sharing that can happen, but we need to get the basics right first. So to me, that would be another trend, that whole partnership thing between landlord and retailer. The
Ressa 18:53
and how are you seeing that going right now?
Shriver-Engdahl 18:57
I see. I mean, I can’t. These are my people. This is where I come from. And so there always was and you may not be free to say this. But I think everybody knows there’s always been sort of an us and then kind of camps in in retail, leasing and landlords and retailers and from both sides and a little bit of maybe healthy distrust of certain things. But I’m seeing that, like I said, we had to come together when there are bankruptcies and closures. We had to work together to make sure that there was consumer competence around hygiene, opening and then closing and opening again. So that’s how I’m seeing what happened. And what I’m seeing as sort of the utopia in my opinion is that we have everything to gain by selling more stock, right? If the retailer is successful in the end, their sales are healthy, the landlord is excited. I school and their their earnings are healthy. And we just are I feel like we’re on a progression. And we got to get to that place where we really truly embrace each other as financial partners, rather than sort of partner. Does that answer your question? Sure.
Ressa 20:16
And so I’m challenging you a little bit here. There’s a, and I don’t disagree with anything you said, I think it’s super important. One thing we never hear about, and I’m curious on your take, and I’m not sure there should be but, you know, we’re, you know, we’re talking a lot about what the landlords need to do in order to help facilitate retail sales at their property. And help actually, the retailers you mentioned earlier, like, you know, in today’s day and age, landlords have to really put a lot more into helping the retailer, does the retailer have to do anything to help the landlord be successful? Other than stack it high and let it fly?
Shriver-Engdahl 21:04
Yeah, but I know that’s, I think that’s a really great question. I think that we we determine what retailer, I’m, I’m talking like, I’m a shopping center person, because that’s in my heart, I still am. But I’m during the holy stuff, right? The merchandising of a shopping center, we determine what’s right for our market. I do believe that there. If we get to that utopia, that I’m talking about that real partnership, then there is a I think there should be a requirement of transparency around trade areas sale around category sales, retailers know a lot, but they don’t know everything about how they’re performing in a shopping center in a Brit in a category, for instance. So yeah, there is a there is a responsibility, they need to run a great operation, they need to be right for the market. And when they aren’t, and there are issues when there’s transparency around those issues. And they can be diagnosed, whether it’s the four, four walls, sort of in the four walls of the store problem, or whether it’s a project problem, maybe there’s an access egress issue, or there’s some new competitor, that opening up down down the street. Yeah, there is a responsibility of the tenant I believe, to be open if they want to be successful. And I mean, open meaning transparent, not just opening their doors. But being to me, those are tables today. Great operator clean, they know their market, they have the merchandise that needs to be there. But to me, it’s really around that transparency, I’ll
Dee 22:47
almost add to that is that they have to have the right stuff, they have to have the thing that the consumer wants. So that’s that’s part of the old school. But is there is this huge guardedness around data sharing between the retailers and the landlords. And I know it has to do because it implies, you know, capability to pay rent. And what you should charge them and everyone’s sort of got a different thing. And retailers could legitimately say, you know almost what everyone else is rented. That’s not the landlord doesn’t want to share that. But like we go out and we buy data that shows online sales and in store sales at the retailer level at the at the county level by retailer, you should be able to get that information from the retailer. And you should be able to have some trust in your part who is the shopping center to use it beneficially to drive people like that. So I’m going to go promote this center as the shopping center operator, I need to know who I’m promoting to. And what those are, what the splits are. Do I have a lot of people here and it helps me determine as the landlord if you’re a landlord, who to bring in next, what the what the market demand for the next retailer is in this area. So that information should flow more easily. It does not though. And we see that. Yeah, I don’t think that’s that’s it? You know,
Ressa 24:21
I don’t think that’s unique to
Dee 24:25
our industry.
Ressa 24:26
We like to think it is right. I mean, I’ll give you your industry. Do you?
Dee 24:32
Do you share
Ressa 24:34
the prices of each customer with all your customers? You’re not? Exactly right. So I think I don’t disagree. Transparency, I think will help everybody and I’m interested to see how we get there is an industry and so thank you for that. Thank you for taking my challenge on that. All right, what’s the top trend coming in? 2020 One
Dee 25:02
I’m sort of torn between two pieces of it, they’re kind of similar, but we’re really seeing a lot of interest in E commerce, from regional Sharpies. Right, and whether they’re playing with it and dipping their foot in the water, or whether they’re watching it, there are all sorts of teeth on it. And we’re seeing this around the world, we’re working on a deep project in Singapore, in Europe and in the US to where that, look, it’s a long road to go before we get there. But everything available at my property is also available online, or local delivery, for pickup and in store. And so that’s, that’s a trend we are absolutely seen. We think that in order to make that happen, you’ve got to have that focus on the customer relationship as the as the as the shopping center sponsor. And there’s a lot of ways you can play in that game, and put up an e commerce website that takes feeds in from the retailers and sell them. Or you can build infrastructure and services around what the retailer needs, if they’re selling and distributing online. Because ecommerce is no longer the same thing, it used to be like a, again, another one, I’ve used a lot, but I’m walking down the street and I’m three blocks from a Starbucks and I order my coffee and I get there, I take it off the shelf when I walked by the store, that’s an E commerce transaction that happened in a brick and mortar distribution, right. And that same thing is going to come into the rest of the of the of the retail chain, you know, the retail sort of relationships out there. And we’re going to see a lot more of that. Right. And that that is a big trend that we have, we see going into 2021, it’s big for us. And it’s it’s big for choppies are the look at you know, just take it outside of something we’re not involved in other than observers, with Simon did with with an investment into law, guilt, a lot of money that went into it. And it’s primarily about a database of shoppers and their preferences and how to how to how to engage them digitally, to drive them in store and try to write and to interact with them digitally and transact with a combination. If I
Ressa 27:20
order my quad express one ice three blocks away from Starbucks on my phone, and then I get to the store, I go to pick it up and I go that’s salami and cheese little platter looks really good. And I buy that in the door. Exactly. Is that any commerce transaction?
Dee 27:45
Exactly. If a tree falls in the forest, right, you know, it is I mean, if you just go research a car online, and then go buy it, that’s the you know, is that ecommerce, even if I didn’t transact, but all my information around it was that so it goes both ways. Is that a brick and mortar sale or? So? I don’t think that it’s one or the other. I think it’s both. Okay.
Shriver-Engdahl 28:10
Sorry, I didn’t mean to stop. Please. Go ahead, stop. No, I’m
Dee 28:15
done. Yeah.
Shriver-Engdahl 28:16
I think this e commerce, convergence in the consumers mind is a is really good for business for retailers and for landlords. We used to squabble with retailers about Oh, was that what constitutes an online sale? What constitutes an in store sale? Are you taking when people buy something online? And then they return it in store? Are you taking it off of my sales in store for that day? Are you taking that off your numbers that you’re submitting? Is that what your audit is? And we’ve we’ve read research, right, the halo report, etc. They’re very intertwined. They are not distinctly different things they were. But we’re going to get to a place where total trade area sales are what we’re going to look at Mark my words. And this ecommerce thing is just another step to getting us there. And it makes total sense. Let’s stop arguing about whether it’s an online sale or an offline sale. Let’s just talk about how do we make sure that we have healthy sales in our trade area, period. I’m off my soapbox, Chris.
Ressa 29:32
Okay. And then in these things that you’re talking about in fulfillment happening at shopping centers around the globe, you know, and you’re going to start to see that more as your top trend. Do you envision a place where people are going and picking up and maybe buying in those facilities? Are they completely boogly? Okay, yeah, well,
Shriver-Engdahl 29:57
like it could be super sexy like for are very high end Bal Harbour shops, it could be, you know, it’s got a gorgeous pavilion, you pull your car up there, it’s got fitting rooms, maybe there’s a tailor there that that’s there all the time and maybe the office for the personal shopper concierge is there, all of your online purchases, Mr. Rose are here, here’s your room, please go try it on, give me all the stuff you hate. Keep all the things you want. And it’s very streamlined. Or it could be something simple, like when you go to Walmart to pick up your groceries. And you just are looking for a very sort of convenient experience. But it can be what we make it and it can fit with the brand, or the consumer base, no matter who that is, we can make it super plush, or we can make it very utilitarian. But we better make it convenient and flexible. And what the consumer wants.
Ressa 30:57
When are we out of the r&d phase of this type of stuff? Where and people can quantify returns? And how, you know, return on investment and how much money they’re making on this?
Dee 31:11
People? Yeah, I think we’re a little bit of a ways out on at least into 22, right? I mean, it’s gonna take time to build that kind of stuff. And then you got to say, alright, now I can measure the ROI and the ROI, I can measure the impact it’s having. But then you got to grow it from there, right. But your digital channels should become, we have seen customers look at building a database, and getting it categorized as an asset under their REIT coverage, right? You know, so they want to use these things to build an asset and grow that asset. So the expense on that, you know, fits into their guidelines as a REIT. So, we’re starting to see people go there, it’s going to have to it’s not going to happen overnight, but COVID is clearly you know, accelerated. And the attribution you mentioned on the last question is very, it’s anecdotal. But there was a company called curbside, that when the whole on demand economy, things are taking off, they focus less on delivery, but literally curbside. And I talked to an operator who had one out in California, I think it was a test. Most of the customers would pull in, get their bags, put them in the car, drive across the street, go on the parking lot, and then walk into shopping center because they wanted something else. So all these interactions lead to add on purchase. But I think you’re right, getting back to the r&d question, we’re definitely got to get through 21 and do some pilots trials, and we’ll start to see that but it will grow.
Ressa 32:44
So attribution doesn’t matter if there’s full transparency, because then then people can make calls based on what they’re saying. But if there’s not transparency, you’re going to constantly have this attribution. tug and pull
Shriver-Engdahl 33:01
your eyes I wanted to add to what John said about about this whole, you know, are we in r&d? If you think about it, I’m going to be a little bit of a contrarian, if you think about it, if Best Buy was waiting to see what, what the potential return on their bogus operation was, and they were waiting for it to be significant or meaningful to invest in it, they wouldn’t have been in nearly the amazing position, they were going into COVID. So I appreciate coming from the world that I come from where you where you come from, Chris, that there is there is a lot of pressure to show ROI. But I think that the hanging back and waiting I mean, remember when I was at Forest City, they used to say we want to be on the leading edge, not the bleeding edge. I just feel like that period of time is getting more and more condensed that we can’t really afford to hang back and wait until something’s a sure thing. I think we do need to take a little bit of a shoe from technology which is we try something we aren’t afraid to fail and we iterate on it right we tweak it we figure out oh, that’s where it went wrong. Let’s let’s fix that.
Ressa 34:25
I talk about all the time being decisive. You have to take shots and swing the bat. But the I think that’s easier for Amazon Walmart target Best Buy and a lot harder for Bob’s pizza shop to do if he misses his out.
Shriver-Engdahl 34:45
Yeah, I think I’m always talking more about our industry in general. Yeah,
Ressa 34:50
I got it that I guess that’s that’s the point. That’s where I go to right like we have to get to a place where Bob’s can see a return, otherwise, he doesn’t have the luxury. And we saw this through COVID, he doesn’t have the luxury to, you know, to take those risks, right his
Shriver-Engdahl 35:10
100% I think it’s the landlord’s. It’s our landlord’s responsibility to help to make sure that Bob has the digital tools he needs to be successful, they’re busy. When I was working in the shopping center industry, I literally would talk to people who have their life savings wrapped up in a cart, or a small store. And we didn’t have a lot of tools to give them advertising was expensive. So some of the smallest, financially impactful things we could do was, make sure they had signs in the mall, make sure they were on the website, I think we can do a damn sight better than that. Now. And that’s part of the responsibility landlords have, I believe,
Ressa 35:57
there’s a lot there’s a lot of landlords though out there who are in no different position than Bob’s pizza, they have, they own a 20,000 square foot building they have, they have a lender, and the property generates $100,000 a year in cash. And that’s what they eat off of. And then when that goes to 50,000, or whatnot, they don’t have, you know, just all these cash sitting in the bank to deploy into tech, not every technology initiative that comes next in order to continue to help the retailers. You know, there’s a, there’s a lot, there’s a lot of landlords, and, you know, there’s a lot of lot of landlords out there where most of the tenants in the shopping center are much more much bigger balance sheets than they have even the biggest landlords. Right? You know, there’s there’s no landlord, who has a bigger balance sheet than Walmart. There’s no, right. And so, you know, they’re the number one on fortune 500. So I think landlords need to help, I think there’s this, there’s this kind of, and this is what I was getting out of what retailers could do, there’s this, it feels, there’s whether it’s headline news, or whatnot, and there’s a lot of onus on landlords and I take pride on everything we’re doing here at DLC to try to help tenants. But there’s this, there’s this kind of, I think it comes from the old adage of, you know, renting a home when, you know, the landlord’s wealthy person, and they’ve got all these deep pockets. And when you’re renting, you know, your apartment like that guy who bought that real estate to be a landlord, he must be really well off. And that’s trickled over the years into commercial real estate. And it’s just not always the case. And, you know, there’s I think, you know, we’ll see, and it happens just like in every business, the strong survive and the weak do not, and we’ll see how it plays out. So
Dee 38:11
I totally agree. There’s some good market opportunities there because there’s a bunch of Bob’s pizzas out there. And that’s from Postmates. And DoorDash, and Grubhub have gone there allowing Bob to expand his business, and a little Middle Eastern place that’s literally been there since the 70s. Right, it is tiny. You can hardly go there anymore. Because there’s so many delivery guys there. They’re clearly serving more people than they ever could with the small number of tables. So these things work out. And there are casualties along the way. Without Yeah, yeah, yeah, there are definitely. It’s terrible, right. Especially because Bob’s got everything in the pizzeria. Right. That sounds good. And it’s over. Right. And he’s looking for a job somewhere. Yeah. So you don’t want to see that. But those become great market opportunities. People build some serious unicorn valuations, around things like that. I put Postmates at that, having they probably raised $900 million and just sold themselves for 2.4 million billion. Yeah. And they haven’t made a dime. Yeah,
Shriver-Engdahl 39:17
sounds really good. Oh,
Dee 39:19
neither has the guy who’s buying them either Uber or dime either. All the investors made money.
Ressa 39:25
But yeah. Alright, so that brings us I’m conscious of time. That brings us to the last part of the show. Are you ready? Yes, I’m ready. Call us retail wisdom. All right. Each of you what is your best piece of commercial real estate advice?
Dee 39:40
establish a relationship with the customer.
Ressa 39:43
I love it. Stephanie.
Shriver-Engdahl 39:45
Don’t be so fixated on the bottom line that you forget to look up at the horizon for what’s coming.
Ressa 39:53
Okay, I like it. I like it. sage advice. Um, My job what extinct retailer you wish would come back from the dead.
Dee 40:05
I want the original Banana Republic. One with Docker type Jean pants and stretch cotton T shirts that I’m wearing. I want the one that had the pith helmets in the Israeli paratrooper briefcases
Shriver-Engdahl 40:20
and the airplane hanging.
Dee 40:22
Your read with the stories of the guy in his wife who went to Burma and they found these great shorts. I used to love that store. Awesome.
Shriver-Engdahl 40:32
Stephanie. I’m gonna go with that. That’s literally when he said that. I’m like, I’m stealing that too. I’m just gonna I used to get the paper catalog and it was like, so entertaining to read. So yeah, I miss them.
Dee 40:45
I’ll tell you I’ve a long time ago, I lived in Egypt. And we we used to make fun of these guys with these best. We call them like banana republic tourists, right? Because now you would say that and it wouldn’t even make sense to anybody, right? Yeah. But we see them walking through the markets and like they got outbid at the Banana Republic where they went. All right. Last question. I am
Ressa 41:14
on booty bands website. What does a 20 day booty band plus ABS level one booty band retail for and if you’re not familiar with elastic band, booty, big booty bands or mini rubber loop bands designed to be placed around the thighs, legs, ankles, feet, shoulders and arms. They’re used as part of a physical exercise program with the intention to add additional resistance challenge to natural movements such as squats, lunges, sides and kicks.
Shriver-Engdahl 41:48
Okay. John,
Ressa 41:51
the price or you’re guessing the price. But Chris, how many bands do you get this in? This one is one band.
Shriver-Engdahl 41:58
One band. All right,
Ressa 42:00
but it comes. It does come it does come with a 20 day personal training workout and interactive workout calendar.
Dee 42:08
Oh, I’ve got a little I’m doing 1990 920-999-2995
Ressa 42:18
Stephanie, you are so close to this $30 man, thank you for playing
Dee 42:26
your booty bands.
Ressa 42:30
All right. Well listen, John and Stephanie. Thank you so much. This was great. Really appreciate it.
Shriver-Engdahl 42:35
Super fun, Chris, thank you for having us and we can’t wait to have you on our podcast.
Ressa 42:40
I can’t wait either. Alright, thanks, Chris. Thank you for listening to retail retold. If you want to share a story about a retail real estate deal that you were a part of on our show. Please reach out to us at retail retold at DLC mgmt.com This show highlights the stories behind the deals from all perspectives. So it doesn’t matter if you are a retailer, broker, entrepreneur, architect or an attorney. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to retail retold so you don’t miss out on next Thursday’s episode