Monday, December 28th, 2009
In 2008 I made 10 trips to Dubai and worked on two projects. In doing so, I met many wonderful people and saw a good deal of projects that were beyond belief. A good deal of these projects were completed and many more will never be built. In general, I found the Emiratis to be gracious host and the hired help to be less than forth coming. Outlined below are my observations. (more…)
Tags: development, Dubai, Dubailand, UAE, Wafi
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Thursday, November 5th, 2009
When I heard that Louis Vuitton was opening a store in Mongolia’s capital, Ulaanbaatar, last month I was completely intrigued by this unexpected announcement. So I decided to research and came across some interesting information that has shed light not only onto Louis Vuitton’s decision but the luxury market as a whole. (more…)
Tags: Louis Vuitton, luxury, Mongolia, recession, Retail
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Thursday, October 29th, 2009
It seems like everywhere you look, retailers are closing shop and filing bankruptcies, and empty storefronts are lining the streets. Last year we saw the closing of retail giants, Circuit City and Linens N’ Things, and luxury retailers such as Versace also closed stores around the world. So why is it that Legoland Discovery Center, an attraction centered on the LEGO building blocks, is opening stores in Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta?
I believe Legoland sees an opportunity in the recession because consumers are looking for free or affordable cost entertainment in their malls. This trend also corresponds to a consumer who expects their news to be free on the web. Consequently, we see malls across the globe add entertainment and amusement venues to draw consumers who have relegated shopping to obligatory time, which is something close to work. These consumers are bored with the same stores in every mall and with higher gas prices, lost home values and depressed 401K accounts they do not have the funds for a shopping spree. (more…)
Tags: bahrain, Disney Store, Dubai, entertainment, lego, Legoland, mall of emirates, malls, shopping center, shopping mall, ski dubai, wahoo water park
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Friday, October 9th, 2009
Lego
Lego has opened its first concept store in Concord Mills, located north of Charlotte, NC. The 4,520 square foot store has been designed to create an interaction between children with on-site master builders. The store has room for birthday parties and classes.
New World
A new world is likely to emerge in which designers rebel against long lead times and where they take their collections directly to the consumer through their own boutiques, trunk shows, and over the web.
Web Sales
Web sales are projected to reach $156 billion in 2009, representing 6% of the total U.S. retail pie
The Web Fashion Consumer
Consumers have come to expect new merchandise more frequently, thanks to the web and fast fashion retailers such as H & M. Many cannot understand why they have to wait 6 months to see the fashions seen on the runways. Buyers at department stores generally base their orders on the past, while fashion editors gravitate to the most photogenic and future looking styles, leaving the consumer stuck in the middle. This results in one facet of the fashion industry looking forward and the other looking backwards. The consequence: a consumer on one hand is told what to buy but on the other, not where to buy it.
In response, a new generation of fashion retailers is emerging on the web where news is freely given and fashion is sold. Net-a-porter with average sales of $820.00 per transaction and customers from 170 countries is one example of this new generation of merchants. The company has successfully merged its web retail site with a fashion news site catering to a new consumer who wants credible news over magazine advertisements and the most up to date fashion now.
Entertainment
Families spent 5.1% more on entertainment in 2008 than in 2009, something that has surprised many economists. As consumers tightened their pocket books and wallets one would expect entertainment to be one of the first categories to see significant decreases. But the 5.1% increase in spending equated to 16.5 billion more dollars spent in the category over 2007.
Household debt
The American family is trying to put money into savings and reduce their overall debt, but they are clearly not faring as well as one might expect in this recession. Household debt now amounts to about 125% of after tax income.
High Net Worth Individuals
Luxury retailers are faced with a significant decline in Americans with a high net worth defined as having $1,000,000 of assets available for investment. In 2008 the assets of these individuals dropped by as much as 22%. The result is a major decrease in sales at retailers such as Neiman Marcus where sales have decreased by over 20% in 2009 over 2008.
Tags: consumer, consumer spending, consumerism, entertainment, fashion, fashion trends, household income, japan, lego, luxury, online sales, online shopping, recession, Retail, versace, web sales
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Friday, October 9th, 2009
One of the first lessons I remember from my undergraduate anthropology studies is “ask how not why/what”. Many market research studies examine who buys what fashion and what are the fashion trends, but it fails to understand the underlining why. By asking how, you implicitly are requesting a story and not a simple answer. “Why” can often put individuals on the defensive leading to short abrupt answers, and does not actually reveal the why or motivation behind a decision. Understanding why and how these trends occur enable us to build strong brand loyalty and partake in better predictive analysis.One of the first lessons I remember from my undergraduate anthropology studies is “ask how not why/what”. Many market research studies examine who buys what fashion and what are the fashion trends, but it fails to understand the underlining why. By asking how, you implicitly are requesting a story and not a simple answer. “Why” can often put individuals on the defensive leading to short abrupt answers, and does not actually reveal the why or motivation behind a decision. Understanding why and how these trends occur enable us to build strong brand loyalty and partake in better predictive analysis. (more…)
Tags: brands, consumers, customers, fashion, japan, loyalty, market research, methods, tokyo, trends
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Friday, October 9th, 2009
While the residential market may be showing some signs of recovery, vacancies in commercial properties continue to rise at an alarming rate. In short, non-enclosed shopping centers reached a 10.3% vacancy rate ending in the third quarter of 2009, and enclosed malls jumped to 8.6%.
And it certainly is not looking to get better for some time. As vacancies increased, average rents declined to $16.89 per square foot for non-enclosed centers and down to $39.18 for enclosed malls. Likewise, the Federal Reserve has reported 8,300 store closings including 1,500 large anchor stores in 2009 alone.
Nationwide, office vacancies and rents are faring worse. The vacancy rate, in office properties hit a five-year high at 16.5% in the third quarter of this year. The decline in occupancy came as 19.6 million square feet of office space was returned to landlords in the third quarter and 64.2 million for the year.
As bad as the current environment is for landlords, things will become bleaker as unemployment rises because office occupancy tends to trail employment by 18 to 24 months.
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Over the past 6 weeks we have seen our daily readership of our blogs and traffic to our web site almost double. Visitors vary widely and range from Brazil to Southeast Asia and from the Middle East and India to Europe and North America. As our readership continues to grow we will add many new points of view and share more insights derived from our projects and clients located around the world. As we grow, we want you to feel at home in our next generation of community building with the introduction of MyVillageSolution.com early next year. You can help us grow by adding your own points of view to our blogs and sending your friends links to our site.
Occasionally, one of our readers will ask us questions concerning the services we provide. In brief, we are marketplace crafters in the sense that we define a market opportunity and then craft a built environment to answer the needs of merchants, restaurants, entertainment venues and most importantly the consumer. On the surface, it may appear to the more casual reader that we are something between architects and real estate developers. While we posses many of the same skills, our core competency is our ability to interpret trends both current and future in contemporary culture and translate those into the marketplace. As such, we do extensive market research, create multi retail marketplace concepts, direct the design execution and recruit merchants.
(more…)
Tags: development, market, market research, mobile market, Real Estate, Retail, Village Solutions
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Friday, September 25th, 2009
Below is a reprint of the Broken Sidewalk articel on Creation Gardens and the Service Welding and Machine site.
Concept plan of how the Service Tanks block could one day be redeveloped
Faced with the uncertain future of its current location in the path of the planned Spaghetti Junction expansion and looking for room to expand, Creation Gardens, a local distributor of wholesale produce and gourmet foods, plans to relocate its facilities into the heart of the East Market Street – Nulu corridor.
Creation Gardens owners Ron and Mollie Turnier have placed three parcels on East Market between Clay and Shelby Streets under contract and plan to build a state-of-the-art retail and commercial distribution center on the corner of Market and Shelby Streets. The land is currently occupied by the Neurath & Underwood Funeral Home and a gravel lot used to store tanks for the adjacent Service Welding and Machine business which will to continue to operate at its current location. (more…)
Tags: creation gardens, Louisville, market, preservation, urban, urban development, urban district, urban renaissance
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