News
Viva La Retail
May 23, 2011
| Retail’s back on track, if the 30,000 people (and 143 new exhibitors) expected at ICSC’s annual RECon conference in Las Vegas today are any indication. Bisnow reporters will be on the ground for the next two days covering the biggest retail event of the year | |||
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| “We’re out of space” on the event floor said a proud David Henry, CEO of Kimco Realty Corp and future ICSC chairman. There’s hardly any shopping center development right now and international retailers are interested in expanding into the US—and this cross-border attentiveness will only further help shopping centers, he says. But the industry still faces challenges, including the lack of an online sales tax, economic-driven decreases in store footprints, and the continually struggling mom-and-pops. | |||
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| Video may have killed the radio star, but retail stores are still holding on against online outlets like Amazon, we learned yesterday from Walmart Realty's Carole Baker, Terranomics Retail Services' Tina Essegian, JLL's Margaret Caldwell, and Prudential Real Estate Investors' Collete English Dixon. But in order to survive, retailers have to adapt to and embrace technology instead of having an “us vs. them” mentality, Tina says. People still like the social aspect of retail, with 78% of the population still shopping in stores, Collete says. (When people start sending their holograms to the store, will that still count?) | |||
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| We’re seeing a new frugality that will persist and determine where people spend their money, Carole says, with more people using smartphones to make decisions. Over 73 million people (31% of mobile phone users) have smartphones, and of those, over 40% have bar code scanning apps, Margaret adds. Retailers are embracing technology to drive people into stores, including services like Groupon, Foursquare, and instant coupons, as well as leveraging entertainment to make interactive shopping experiences. Retailers like Nordstrom and JCPenney now have options to buy online and pick up merchandise in-store the same day. But if states impose taxes on online sales, some of the incentives to shop online may go away, they say. |
