Is it now a good time to open a retail business?
The retail industry is undergoing an unparalleled transformation. New challenges emerge, accelerated by recent issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, sky-high inflation and changing demographic patterns. The blurring lines between online retail and brick-and-mortar contribute to a huge reshaping of the retail landscape with impact on activity, footfalls, rents and yields.
That’s why we are here to help you through this challenging times. Our consultancy services aim to boost your retail performances. By analysing your current retail locations and sales, we will help you to define your most successful retail units portfolio in order to target your right customers and maximize your sales.
To read: The future of the Belgian retail market
To read: The 6 main factors that will define the future of the Belgian retail market
Overview:
- Find the perfect location to open a new store
- Increase your retail sales
- Optimise your retail locations
- We can help you find your retails needs
Find the perfect location to open a new store
Have you already asked yourself who exactly are your clients? What would be the best strategy to target them? Where would it be wise to locate your store(s) in order to target your customers more easily?
Let’s work together and we will answer all these questions and explain them to you in a really simple way. By assessing your demand, supply and competition, we create a visual display where you can see what your optimal location(s) would be to perfectly target your customers.
Contact us and we will help you understand who and where are your existing and potential customers, perfectly segment the market and then tell you where it would be best to locate your store(s). All this by combining catchment areas, population data, demographic profiles, expenditures figures,.. data that we’ve been collecting for 20 years now.
What are the areas with highest potentials for my retail project?
Defining the most appropriate market segment for your brand is the first thing to do when you make a strategic selection of your next commercial location. Whether it is in the High Street, Out of Town or in a Shopping Centre, each segment has its own particular features to bear in mind when determining the ideal location for your business.
Globally, the footfall, which means the number of potential customers passing through the selected area, will prove to be a determining factor for any type of business.
More specifically, if you decide to set up in the High Street, in other words in shopping streets mainly located in the city centre, you will need to take these factors into account:
- The catchment area of the shopping street
- The presence of other retailers
- The surrounding flow of tourists
- The position of the street as a main shopping thoroughfare
- More specific projects in the area that may impact your business
For example: the pedestrian zone in the centre of Brussels - The presence of cultural elements nearby.
When it comes to Out of Town sites:
- Road traffic in the surrounding area is undoubtedly the most important element to consider
- The concentration of shops within the study area
- The presence of car parks is also essential for areas situated outside city centres.
If you are looking at Shopping Centres:
- The image of the shopping centre, in other words whether the shopping centre is considered local or national
- The retail mix within the shopping centre itself
- At present, a good mix would consist of +/- 20% food, beverage and leisure businesses, and the rest a combination of traditional businesses (Clothes, Health & Beauty, etc.).
What makes a good retail location?
A good retail location is defined by a perfect combination of:
- Footfall (customers passing through)
- Good visibility, in other words a location that is easy to find
- The quality of the shop front, the architectural quality of the building
- The attractiveness of the town in which you plan to set up your business
- The flexibility of the space you have available. The unit must be easy to use as a shop.
Increase your retail sales
Your sales are disappointing, and you don’t understand exactly the reason why? Need a boost to your retail performances?
Contact our experts now, they will make you understand your key drivers of performances by analysing your actual sales data combined with our catchment and location information. We will then be able to create maps showing areas of saturation and gaps of opportunity. This will help you in making the right decision that will help you grow your business and increase your future retail sales.
Where should I set up my retail business in order to increase my revenue quickly?
The two main points to consider when choosing your next retail location are the footfall and catchment area. Another factor that may make a significant contribution to increasing your revenue is the detection of your “white spots”. “White Spots” are places where your business is not yet present but could be established in order to attract new customers and thus increase your potential income.
If you choose to work with us, we will be able to determine the following factors: footfall, catchment area, population structure, the presence of competitors and/or complementary retailers etc. that are favourable to the establishment of your brand. That way, we will help you determine the places where you should definitely think about setting up in the near future, in order to boost your performance and increase your sales.
How can I increase retail sales and revenue?
Nowadays, an omnichannel strategy is essential to sustain your business and optimise your sales. Developing this type of strategy means aiming to optimise the number of points of sale you have to complement your online sales strategy, which will lead to an increase in your sales.
6 tips to improve retail sales performance
- Offer your customers a genuine experience when they visit your shop.
- Understand and use your customer data strategically, in order to understand your visitors. Then realign your business based on their wishes and needs.
- Define the ideal size of your network and analyse the performance of your current locations.
- Select your future locations from among those that will generate most traffic.
- Define the locations that will maximise your revenue per person.
- Complement your physical network with online sales.
To read: Investment market: what to expect for 2021 after an atypical year in 2020?
Optimise your retail locations or enter a new market without risks
Wondering if all your existing stores are necessary to achieve a successful retail strategy? Looking to open new stores but don’t know how to enter a new market? Entering a new market is not done in just any way. In order not to lose money, you have to study the related components in order to put in place a well thought-out and well-established strategy.
We can support your decision-making process and help you to enter a new market location and/or to optimise your retail locations portfolio by providing you a comprehensive market knowledge. Using data times such as demographics, retail sales, location type, competitors, gravity modelling, economics, rental levels, transportation hubs, variables specific to your needs… and our unrivalled retail properties database, we can help you enter every city of the Belgian and/or Luxembourg market.
Furthermore, by creating dedicated weighted average matrix in collaboration with you, we will help you to optimise your retail portfolio.
If expansion is the answer in your new retail strategy, you could also benefit from our extensive list of available properties which will allow you to find the perfect asset matching your requirements.
✓ Contact us and we will find out together what would be the best strategy for your retail needs.
Why retail location is important?
Numerous surveys have shown that Belgians still want to visit physical shops. The advantage of selecting a location strategically is that it will lead to an increase in the number of potential visitors and, in the long run, to an increase in your sales.
How to boost your business?
At present, your potential customers have access to a wide variety of businesses. So it is crucial for your brand to stand out from the crowd. People who go to a shop today want to do more than simply buy something. That is why it is essential to offer them a real experience from now on, making them want to return as soon as possible.
We can advise you on how to take your customers on a real journey that encourages them to repeat the experience in the future.
We can help you find your retail needs
More than ever, retail will be a question of location, positioning, market knowledge and adaptations. With a total integration between public and open-source data, our 20 years of records, more than 20,000 transactions, both on the letting and investment markets, 50,000 points of sales across Belgium & Luxembourg, footfall evolutions, rental values… we have built an in-house toolkit based on business intelligence, analytical capabilities and expertise.
Through our retail consultancy services, we are best placed to lead the conversation for every
- market-entry advice
- demographic analysis
- feasibility studies
- geographical analysis
- expansion or downsizing plans or
- general strategy guidance.
Our retail consultancy experts have the global network and capabilities to confidently guide you clients, retailers and landlords, old and new, local and international, to the new normal in the retail sector.
Whether you are looking for opening a new store in the main streets, the shopping centres, the out of town retail or a combination of them, our services cover a full range of capabilities, going from basic drivetimes to the most accurate portfolio optimisation.
✓ Do not hesitate to contact us, we are here to answer all your retail needs and questions.
Glossary:
- “Footfall” means the number of people walking along a given street or through a shopping centre, calculated over a period of a week for the High Street market, and counted in months or years for Shopping Centres.
We are currently partnering with MyTraffic to provide footfall data in Belgium. This allows us to obtain even more accurate information for our case studies.
- The “Catchment Area” means the number of residents living around a location/street, based on a given journey time (whether by car, bike or on foot).
