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Page 14 — Retail Properties Quarterly — February 2017
Retail Trends
SRS Real Estate Partners
Tony Pierangeli • Jim Hoffman
Joe Beck • Brian Hollenback • Austin Tillack
Tami Lord • Molly Bayer
SullivanHayes Brokerage –
Boulder
Michael DePalma • Sean Kulzer
David Dobek
SullivanHayes Brokerage –
Denver
Tom Castle • Chris Cook
Courtney Dahlberg Key • Mark Ernster
Mike Kendall • Emily Klimas
John Liprando • Grant Maves
Brian Shorter • Christopher Anton
Josh Burger • Bryan Slaughter
Mark Williford
Tebo Development Company
Stephen Tebo • George Levin
The Zall Company
Stacey Glenn • Stuart Zall
Trevey Land and Commercial
Mitch Trevey • Nick Nickerson • Jason Thomas
Unique Properties Inc.
Marc S. Lippitt • Scott L. Shwayder
Tim Finholm • Brad Gilpin • Phil Yeddis
Gannon Roth • Allen Freedberg
Samuel Leger
Valentiner & Associates
Sheri Valentiner
W.W. Reynolds Companies, Inc.
Chad Henry • Nate Litsey
Marty McElwain
WalderaScott Real Estate
Partners
Kimberly Waldera • Noah Waldera
Scott Nannemann • Paul Klink
Western Centers Inc.
Brian Pesch • Corey R. Wagner • Bill Singer:
Western Investor Network
Tony Hemminger • John Jumonville
Matt Ritter
WestStar Commercial
Tim Hakes • Kevin Hayutin
Michael Hayutin • Stephanie Keyes
Retail Broker Directory
RETAIL BROKER DIRECTORY
If your firm would like to participate in this directory, please contact Lori Golightly at r 303-623-1148 ext. 102
W hat have we learned about
retailing in the last year?
Well, the first quarter of
2016 saw more national
retail store closings than
any quarter since 2010, accord-
ing to Chain Store Age; and several
national retailers filed for bankrupt-
cy, including Aeropostale, American
Apparel, Sports Authority and Radio
Shack, among others. The Limited
announced it is going to close its
remaining 270 stores nationally and
in January Macy’s announced it will
close more than 70 stores in 2017
and 100 more stores in the next
two years. The coming Macy’s clo-
sures average over 150,000 square
feet each. That’s a lot of very large,
vacant retail space hitting the mar-
ket.
What is causing all of this contrac-
tion by national retailers? Maybe
there is a clue in these statistics.
Target’s store sales for third-quarter
2016 were down 6.7 percent, while
its e-commerce sales for those same
stores was up 26 percent, which are
products ordered online and either
shipped from or picked up at those
stores, according to Retail Dive
November 2016. E-commerce across
the U.S. more than doubled from
2009 to 2016, accounting for 4.1 to
8.4 percent of all retail sales in those
respective years, according to the
U.S. Census Bureau. Some sources
have e-commerce as high as 12 per-
cent of total U.S. retail sales and its
share of total retail sales is escalat-
ing annually.
The obvious reason for this escala-
tion in e-commerce is the fact that
we all now carry at least one device
from which we
can order anything
from anywhere.
Which begs the
question, do we
really need all of
those brick-and-
mortar stores to
visit? The short
answer is no. But
again, there is
more to it, and it
begins with the
word millennial.
I have heard this
word more in the
last two years than
I have in all the rest of my late baby-
boomer years. The shopping pat-
terns of the millennial, Generation
X and baby boomer generations are
all different, and these differences
are causing a paradigm shift in how
retailing is executed in America
today.
But first, who makes up these gen-
erations:
• Baby Boomers – Born between
1946 and 1964, currently aged 53 to
71.
• Generation X – Born between
1965 and 1980, currently aged 37 to
52.
• Millennials – Born between 1981
and 1997, currently aged 20 to 36.
The current retail brick-and-mor-
tar stores were built for baby boom-
ers. We grew up without computers.
We saw ads on TV, heard them on
the radio or saw them in the news-
paper and that drove us to the store
to purchase. And as the baby boom-
ers had children and the U.S. popu-
lation took off, we built more stores
to serve that quickly increasing
population.
Generation X were not born with
computer prevalence, but started
using them sometime during their
education years. Email was a norm.
This generation used computers
sometimes to research retail pur-
chases, but still went to the store or
the mall for most of their purchases.
Many millennials, also known as
Generation Y, have never known a
nondigital age – they get their infor-
mation and much of their socializa-
tion from the internet.
All of us have embraced the digital
age to varying degrees; all genera-
tions are using our smart devices
to look up the score of the game,
Google some trivia to settle an argu-
ment and, absolutely, to purchase
retail items online. But the way we
use the internet to make purchases
does differ somewhat between gen-
erations and that is affecting the
way retailers must operate today.
Baby boomers still have the most
disposable income and account for
almost 50 percent of retail sales in
the US. Two-thirds of us routinely
Jay P. Carlson
Managing broker
and co-founder,
Front Range
Commercial LLC,
Colorado Springs
The current brick-and-mortar stores were built for baby boomers, but these stores must
change as Generation X and millennials represent larger portions of the consumer market.