Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
Below is an article about our president, Rick Hill, reprinted from the Courier-Journal.
Run or draw.
That was a decision Rick Hill had to make as an undergraduate at the University of Kentucky nearly 40 years ago. A native of Bardstown, he wanted to be an architect but when he signed up for classes and found that mandatory studio times conflicted with running, he picked running.
“I made a career decision right there,” he recalled.
Maybe not so much.
Despite a long career in marketing shopping centers from his base in Charlotte, N.C., and a lifelong interest in running, Hill never lost his urge to design. He just reinvented himself as a real estate strategist and designer.
(more…)
Tags: design, marketplace crafting, Real Estate, Retail Changes, Rick Hill
Posted in Company News, Industry News, Real Estate, Retail, Shopping Centers, Specialty Retail | No Comments »
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
Posted in Real Estate, Retail, Specialty Retail | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
World Retail
Retailers are flocking to India thanks to an economy that is still growing and a young population increasingly becoming aware of major brands.
Worldwide sales declines among luxury retailers will likely continue through 2010 and into 2011.
JUST THE FACTS
1. The apparel industry is a $191 billion industry.
2. Back to school sales in the U.S. were expected to reach $38.3 billion, up .06% from 2008.
3. A recent study found that in locations with a strong independent retail culture, 45% of every dollar spent at an independent bookstore remained in the local market.
4. In the first half of 2009, the sale of luxury goods dropped 15%-20% over 2009.
5. American families account for 40% of all borrowing in the U.S.
6. Between 2003 and 2004 handbag sales grew by 26%.
7. Handbag sales reached a peak in 2007 of $9 billion, up 100% over 2001. (more…)
Posted in Retail, Specialty Retail | No Comments »
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
Posted in Culture, Real Estate, Retail, Shopping Centers, Specialty Retail, Uncategorized | No Comments »
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.
Friday, October 9th, 2009
In the past several years, much has been written about the proposed and controversial redevelopment plans for the boardwalk and adjacent amusement parks of Coney Island. While a great deal of the attention has been focused on the redevelopment plans of Thor Equities, the once popular Brooklyn seaside resort does not lack in alternative schemes suggested by everyone from theme park managers to the Bloomberg administration to the Municipal Art Society of New York.
In short, opposition to Thor’s plan have been centered around the firm’s plan for as many as a 1,000 hotel rooms and 500,000 square feet of retail space including some big boxes. Alternative suggestions for Coney Island range from “three or four wind in your face rides” to an “eye-popping” attraction akin to the London Eye – not bad suggestions but clearly the product of observers that lack a real sense of the historic Coney Island, let alone what is requires to make the redevelopment an economic success. (more…)
Tags: amusement, andrew lloyd webber, Bloomberg, coney island, new york, redevelopment, Retail, the phantom of the opera, theatre, Thor
Posted in Culture, Real Estate Development, Retail, Specialty Retail | No Comments »
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
Posted in Culture, Real Estate, Real Estate Development, Retail, Shopping Centers, Specialty Retail | No Comments »
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
Posted in Real Estate, Real Estate Development, Retail, Specialty Retail | No Comments »