Optimistic About Retail? You must have been at RECon 2013



Restaurants like Ling & Louie's are building both pad and airport concession spaces to expand their brand.

Last week I attended RECon 2013, the annual global event for the retail real estate community held in Las Vegas.  After sharing stories, ideas and trends with 30,000 of my best friends I’d say the pulse of the North American retail industry is guarded optimism.  With housing in the white-hot zone I trust the adage ‘retail follows rooftops’ will prove itself once again. 

These are the trends to keep in mind:

1.  Growth will be modest.  Overall growth will stay in the single digits for now.  Helpful factors include:  a better capitol market, an uptick in consumer spending and increased restaurant income.

2.  Re-purposing is winning over ground up.  Non-retail and class-C retail spaces are being remodeled for quality retail.  Previous failed big boxes (Circuit City, Linens & Things) are being rapidly absorbed.  Projects once started and abandoned in the recession are coming alive again.

3.  Shift toward urban density.  The millennium generation is moving away from the suburbs and toward the rewards of urban living – more diversity, interaction, entertainment and choices.  Retailers are running sprints to catch this growing consumer clout.  Super store Walmart is rolling out 40,000 sf neighborhood stores and 15,000 sf express stores.  Home Depot began introducing down-sized versions over a decade ago.  Target recently rolled out City Targets in Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle, and Office Depot has designed stores to sell 4,500 items, half their typical inventory.

4.  Brands are re-tooling.  New brands are challenging the established brands, pushing some of those brands to re-tool and reinvent.  Tenant improvements and in-store re-design are must-have skills for retail designers.

5.  Know your malls.  Outlet malls with name brand anchors are going strong.  Outside the very dense metropolitan areas (D.C, New York) standard consumer malls are currently built out, or even over built.  The big trend - the fastest growing segment of retail real estate in America - is the Hispanic Shopping Mall.  It's phenomenal!

 

Looking to serve 50 million US Hispanics, these popular malls are coming into their own in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and other mostly southern states.  Savvy developers are actively mining this new niche with a spending power expected to reach $1.3 trillion by 2015.  Read more in Part II of this blog next week:  Retail Gold Rush – Hispanic Purchasing Power becomes a Major Player.  –

 

Craig Slocum, AIA is a principal with CSHQA and a leading retail designer for the firm.  National clients include Buffalo Wild Wings, Ling & Louie's, Albertsons, Safeway, Moxie Java, Dutch Bros., Walgreens, KeyBank and T-Mobile.

Seeing Green: Manufacturing on a ‘Global’ Scale



Medical office suite with Global Industries furniture and calming color palette

The world’s fifth largest office furniture manufacturer rocks sustainability!

A few weeks ago Megumi Haus and I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Global Industries in Toronto, Canada.  What at tour!  I have been specifying furniture from their family of 40 unique factories for about three years, but seeing the production in real time was fantastic!

Our first tour was of a factory that recycles wood and plastic into furniture components, such as seat pans and backs. Company-wide this amounts to 2,000 tons of scrap diverted annually from the landfill.  Cardboard packing is 80% recycled and cardboard scraps become acoustic panel filler.  Scrap fabric, to the tune of 100 tons per year, becomes insulation or very cool cloth shoulder bags. 

We saw computer aided pattern cutting where the bits of scrap, particularly for solid prints, are tiny!  Leather cutting is taken to a new level of artistry – the entire hide is scanned in one pass with patterns and imperfections noted like a map.  Cutting patterns are adapted to each individual ‘map’ and the very best sections become furniture and cushion centerpieces.  All foam products used at Global are 100% free of chlorofluorcarbons and the company is initiating the use of soy-based adhesives to reduce petro-chemical uses.

Global Industries was started by Canadian business icon Saul Feldberg in 1966.  By the 1980’s Global was seriously engaged in the pursuit and application of recycling and environmentally sound manufacturing to make next generation products.  Today, the group of companies is interwoven in form and function, yet each one must maintain its own profitability.  I was perhaps most impressed by the dedication Global Group demonstrates to manufacturing as much as possible in North America while providing well-managed, living-wage jobs to a wide diversity of employees.

Most of the finished products we saw would be considered mid-range and are less expensive than many designer options, yet they are well designed and very well made.  I feel good about specifying products from these companies.  –

Nicole and Megumi in the Chairman's chair

Nicole Cecil, ASID, LEED AP ID+C, provides interior design and consulting to clients looking for both a great look and a healthy working environment.  To read about Global’s environmental practices visit

http://www.globaltotaloffice.com/gi_2012/control.php?ref=environment