HOW TO: Retail in Public Spaces

Nur is an Associate at Larisa Ortiz Associates.

In a previous post I talked about the benefits that parks and retail may stand to gain from being co-tenants. Today, we look at specific ways in which retail has been incorporated into our parks and open spaces. Depending on the size of your public space, you may decide to incorporate permanent retail spaces or temporary, seasonal ones that can easily be taken down to make room for more pedestrians and park users. Either way, these additional retail spaces can be great opportunities for local businesses and entrepreneurs to test new markets, if made convenient and affordable.

Case Study 1: Times Square Plaza

Vendor: Coffeed, a NYC-Based coffee chain

Space: 100SF, in the center of Manhattan's most trafficked area.

Leasing: The Times Square Alliance, the local non-profit BID, designates an area within Times Square for interested vendors who are then required to build their own structures. Electricity, rubbish removal services, as well as security are provided by Times Square Alliance.

Estimated Rent: $20,000/ month with a revenue share of 8% of sales. Times Square Alliance leased the space via Appear [here], an online listing platform that matches temporary, pop-up retail spaces with creative brands and entrepreneurs.

Added benefits to the vendor: Co-branding and promotional opportunities with the BID on its social media platforms and through other initiatives that the Alliance provides to the tourist, business and residential community.

Case Study 2: Astor Place

Photo: The Village Alliance

Vendors: La Newyorkina and Astor Plate, NYC- based businesses that both had existing storefronts in nearby neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and TriBeCa

Space: 110SF (La Newyorkina) and 200SF (Astor Plate)

Photo: The Village Alliance

Leasing: The plaza in which the kiosks currently sit is property of the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT). However, the local Business Improvement District (BID), the Village Alliance, has a contract with DOT to maintain the plaza. Kiosk vendors contract directly with the BID.

The procurement and bidding process of kiosk operators was a long process, according to William Lewis, Marketing and Events Director of the Village Alliance.  The BID wanted to ensure that they were tapping into existing local businesses and building kiosks that were respectful of the surrounding environment and community. Not only did the BID strive to keep local favorite, MUD coffee, being served at the kiosks, the BID also ensured the design of the kiosks were contextual. For example, the kiosk on the south end of the plaza is a metal structure that reflects the style and aesthetic of  the famous Alamo sculpture (the Cube) and the kiosk design of La Newyorkina on the northern end of the plaza features a hand-painted mural that reflects the local neighborhood.

Like in Times Square, selected operators built their own structures but worked closely with the Village Alliance to finalize designs.

Ensuring success: According to Will (Village Alliance), the kiosks are really popular and doing very well a year since their opening. Their success lends itself to creative menus, a variety of products, a strong daytime population, and of course strong connections to the local neighborhood.

The location of the public plaza by new office developments and the Cooper Union School ensures that the kiosks get strong foot traffic throughout the day. In addition, the BID arranges outdoor tables, chairs, and parasols (like in Times Square!) to support the congregation of large groups and encourage outdoor dining in the warmer months.

Case Study 3: Hunters Point South Park

Vendor: LIC Landing by NYC-Based COFFEED features a healthy selection of locally-sourced food offerings, craft beers, fine wines, and specialty coffees and teas. COFFEED is also a charity-minded café known for donating a percentage of its revenue to local charities.

Space: 1,500 SF, at Hunter’s Point South Park, Long Island City’s waterfront recreation destination.

Leasing: The concession spaces was designed and built during the initial development of the park. Bids were later put out for operators by the NYC Parks department.

Case Study 4: Union Square Park

Market: UrbanSpace has operated the Union Square Holiday Market for over two decades

Space: 30,000SF with about 100 vendors, of which 75% are NYC-based. Individual booth sizes range from half-booths (50SF) to double booths (200SF)

Leasing: The market is made possible via a five-year agreement with the Department of Parks and Recreation negotiated with the market’s operator and founder. The Parks Department opens a round of competitive bidding, issuing a detailed request for proposals and site visits for prospective bidders.

Selected market operators then hold open application calls for interested vendors online.

Estimated Rent: Vendor spaces average between $6,000-$18,000 per vendor, depending on location and size of booths. Each year, UrbanSpace has netted around $2.7 million in vendor fees and compensated the City over $1.5 million.

Case Study 5: Downtown Detroit Parks

Market: Winter in Detroit is sponsored by Bedrock and Quicken Loans Family of Companies. Detroit Downtown Partnership collaborates with the nearby property owners to organize the seasonal markets.

Space: 130SF, pre-fabricated glass structures designed by Philadelphia-based Groundswell Design Group

Leasing: The market operators hold open application calls for interested vendors online. Vendors are selected based on unique and creative retail concepts, quality products and packaging, design of booths, and originality of brand

Estimated Rent: $1,000 for the season (inclusive of electrical, lighting, heating, and security) According to reports, the 38 selected businesses generated more than $2 million in sales between November and January.

Regardless of retail model and leasing structure, we must remember not to get carried away with commercializing parks and public plazas whose first objective is to provide spaces of relief from urban living and circulation opportunities. There is always the potential that highly-curated retail experiences with higher price points may indiscreetly exclude a segment of the population that has less disposable income and therefore is less likely to enjoy a costly park retail experience. 

Incorporating free experiences with the retail activities may alleviate such impacts. Last season, at the Union Square Holiday Market in NYC, for example, there were free goodies and interactive photo booths open-to-all. Candy and cups of hot chocolate were distributed for free to all visitors- thanks to sponsorship by Citibank. These goodies were handed out at the sponsor's booth, where free mobile device charging stations and warming stations and lounge seating were also offered - much needed respite from the cold of winter.

As the weather clears up in the coming weeks *fingers crossed*, keep your eyes peeled for the growing trend of retail concepts in your local park and let us know if you think it's a much-needed public space activation strategy!

How to mitigate construction in your downtown

Nur Asri is an Associate at Larisa Ortiz Associates

Downtowns and cities around the country are undergoing rapid physical transformations whether due to re-investment or adaptation to technological advancements. However, during the process of transformation, roads and sidewalks are often torn up and diverted, street furniture and public spaces are re-designed and replaced and the shopping environment is essentially disrupted.

Regardless of the length of time in which the disruptions occurs (two months or a whole year), customer traffic for retail businesses will be affected because downtowns appear to be less accessible by car and even more difficult to navigate on foot. Furthermore, construction often occurs during the day (and during peak visitation times!) and can be loud and dusty, resulting in an overall unpleasant shopping experience.

Downtown businesses associations and storeowners across the country are adopting a variety of strategies to mitigate the impacts of construction on their operations, sales and visitation.

Here are some steps that you can take to maintain business vitality during your downtown transformation: 

‘Still Open for Business’ Signage

These signs help increase visibility of stores to pedestrians and vehicles passing through your downtown. Customers often assume businesses are closed during construction and are therefore quick to make the decision to drive past and go somewhere else altogether so it is crucial that accurate information is relayed to customers through these signs. Include the names of businesses that are open and directions to any alternate business access, and make sure the signs are placed at key intersections and entry points to your downtown. Some cities have also gotten really creative with their signs:

In Arlington, MA, Capitol Square Business Association plays around with the regular text found on construction signs.

In the City of North Bend, where roads were being torn up for an infrastructure project to bury utility lines and replace the sidewalks and street trees, sign spinners were hired to sing, dance, and do cartwheels while holding out signs that say ‘Downtown Business are Open!’

Signs, however, are only one part of the solution. There are many more steps that need to be taken to ensure that downtown businesses aren’t severely impacted by the process of transformation.

Marketing/ Promotion
Many business associations have dedicated resources to organizing district-wide marketing campaigns to educate customers about construction work and businesses that still need their support during this time.

Pre- Construction
In Madison WI, marketing efforts began two years before construction occurred in order to inform locals that stores and restaurants would remain open throughout the process. The guerilla campaign was extensive and consisted of yard signs, community newsletters, local media coverage and even a Facebook page.

During Construction 

The Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership launched an ‘Eat Drink Shop [HERE]’ Campaign. The Partnership rolled out bright yellow signs and handouts that list all of the businesses that were open during construction. 

Meanwhile, in Bangor, Maine, (and also downtown Coral Gables) happy hour events ensured that customers were still coming downtown after dark despite the facelift it was undergoing. Bars affected by the construction zone participated in the ‘Hard Hat Happy Hours’ events, which took place weekly. Customers who attended were then rewarded with highly coveted downtown parking passes and gift certificates to local businesses to drive return visits. Similarly, many other downtowns have also handed out coupon books to entice customers to continue shopping thru the construction period.

Valet parking
When convenient on-street parking spaces are temporarily lost to construction activity, customers may be less than willing to patronize downtown stores if they have to park in parking garages/lots located farther away from the retail core. Every effort should be made to ease the driving customer’s journey (especially if the majority of your downtown customers are arriving by car!) and this might include a valet service.

In Birmingham, MI, where construction through the city center is expected to take about 4-5 years, the city’s promotional arm Birmingham Shopping District is planning to provide valet service that would allow customers to drive to the edge of the construction site to drop off their cars before hitting the rest of the downtown on foot.

Painted fences/barriers

Finally, there are creative ways to turn construction fencing and barriers into public art. Back in 2012, we featured Alliance for Downtown New York’s RE:Construction program. Since then many more downtowns and cities have also turned to art as a way to mask the eyesore of construction. In 2013, the Downtown Ithaca Alliance put out a call for artists to adopt 8x4 plywood panels that were put up as fencing around the reconstruction of the Commons public space. Selected artists were invited to paint directly on to the panels that stayed up throughout the construction period.

In downtown Seattle, WA mural artists and artist-teams have created 200-foot long murals now on view on the Civic Square construction fence. The site will be home to a mixed-use, high-rise tower and open space that will complete the city's Civic Center Campus.

While the above strategies aim to ease the impact of construction for customers, there are also steps that need to be taken to mitigate the impact on business operations.

Loading/Unloading
Even without the complications of construction downtown, loading and unloading of delivery trucks is already a common issue faced by business owners. Without a well-thought out contingency plan, your downtown may face heavy congestion as a result of trucks double-parking on narrow side streets.

To avoid this, pre-planned alternative delivery routes must be identified for affected drivers and relayed early on so that staff are alerted to the change of procedures. In addition, detour signs must be posted clearly to guide delivery drivers. Where possible, alleyways may be re-purposed for loading/unloading during construction phase.

Low-interest loans
With larger-scale construction projects, many cities such as Portland, OR and Salt Lake City, UT have set precedents for dedicating resources to offer low-interest loans to affected businesses. Salt Lake City’s Economic Development Office, for example, established a revolving loan program and set aside funding for light rail construction mitigation up to $20,000 at 3% interest per applicant. Successful applicants simply had to be within one block of construction and be able to demonstrate how they were being impacted.

Finally, with additional financial and technical assistance, business owners might even consider implementing another method to reach customers if they don’t already have one. Starting online delivery services can certainly nudge customers who are unable or unwilling to navigate through construction to continue to support downtown businesses.

Make sure your downtown transformation works for you
The menu of strategies offered here cost lots of time and money to plan and implement. (Note: Birmingham Shopping District set aside $100,000 just to carry out a promotional campaign including free valet parking and shopping coupons). Depending on the capacity and resources of your downtown, and also the scale of construction happening, you may elect strategies that work best for your businesses.

Most importantly, ensure that you start planning early and work very closely with local merchants to ensure their buy-in and support for your elected strategies.

The Age of the Selfie

Greetings from Austin Mural, TX. Photo: Yelp

Nur Asri is an Associate at Larisa Ortiz Associates.

Whether we care to admit or not, we’ve all taken one or been forced to take one. I'm talking about selfies. Selfies are digital self-portraits that began to really take off when smart phones became equipped with the forward-facing camera. The photos themselves haven’t radically changed retail or downtowns – believe me, people were taking self-portraits even when they had film cameras. However, when the digital self-portraits are uploaded to social media platforms and tagged and shared by users across the world, that’s when it starts to have an impact on the brand and identity of a retailer or an entire downtown.

The selfie is now a common tool that people – young and old – use to share their individual experiences with others and to self-brand. The marketing power of the selfie cannot be understated. A HTC survey in 2013 of more than 2,000 mobile phone users in the UK found that about 51% of the UK had taken a selfie, creating about 35 million photos every month. Although a greater share of those aged 18-24 had taken a selfie, almost a third of those aged 65 and older had also taken one, indicating that the selfie can work on a wide range of customer segments.

Just to understand the magnitude of selfie-taking, we took a look at the number of selfies taken on Instagram.

Sure, selfies are often criticized for being associated with vanity or narcissism but selfies are often the first and last step a customer takes in their purchasing journey. Selfies provide inspiration for those seeking to make purchases and selfies provide validation for those who have already bought products – it’s a near instant feedback loop for customers. Selfies have indeed increased sharing of product information and resulted in more educated and conscious consumers. Today, customers search for authentic peer recommendations for a range of products and even for travel decisions so information shared on social media has in many ways surpassed the influence of magazines and newspapers. A 2016 TopDeck Travel Survey in 2016 found that in choosing where to travel, 76% of Millennials surveyed said that friends’ recommendations…and social media came far ahead of travel-agent advice.

How are retailers making use of selfies?

Retailers in a wide range of categories have used selfies as a leverage to raise brand and product awareness, and also boost in-store traffic.

1. Drug stores/ Beauty

Interactive mirrors placed in UK drug store, Superdrug Beauty Studio, allow customers to experiment with hair colors virtually and take selfies after getting hair or make-up done. This helps the store’s customers to share the quality of services being offered in-store while also providing free marketing. To make the sharing of the selfie easier, the store features iPads that enable customers to send the selfie to Facebook or Twitter with the official campaign hashtag, #TreatYourSelfie.

2. Apparel

Many apparel stores from Victoria’s Secret to French Connection and Ted Baker have used selfies as part of their marketing campaigns. These stores encourage shoppers to take photos in-store by creating a perfect backdrop or setting for taking selfies. These include special installations, interactive selfie booths and attractive storefront displays. The stores then encourage shoppers to share the selfies on their personal Twitter and Instagram profiles using official campaign hashtags by providing incentives like free gifts for anyone that uploads the photo to social media or by displaying the selfies on a public screen or storefront window.

By displaying the selfies publicly, passersby became very engaged with the store. They were able to vote for favorite selfies using hand sensors and were then more likely to walk into the store.  

3. Food

Even with food, selfies can happen. The phenomenon known as foodstagramming is the act of taking photos of one’s food and posting them on social media. Restaurants are certainly taking advantage of it because it can be free advertising (depending on the photographer’s comments!).

How can downtowns use selfies?

Speaking of food, this week is Restaurant Week across New York City and sure enough many business improvement districts are using food selfies as a way to raise awareness of the district events and drive greater traffic to the restaurants in these areas post-event. Grand Street BID in Brooklyn, for example, is offering foodstagrammers a chance to win $50 to their favorite Grand Street Restaurant if they upload a picture of their Restaurant Week meal with the hashtag #DineOnGrand and tag the BID in the photos.  

Beyond food selfies, commercial districts can also use iconic art and signage and interactive sculptures to encourage selfies by visitors and to reinforce their identities. In the past, we’ve featured the I Amsterdam sign as one example of a way that signage can drive popular images posted on social media. Many other downtowns have driven high visitation rates with iconic selfie spots. Here are some examples:

In Austin, murals across the city have become destinations in themselves and visitors are taking selfies in front of them and sharing images on social media with hashtags #Austin #ATX

In San Diego, the gateway signage to the Gaslamp Quarter has also become very iconic as a selfie spot for visitors to the area.

Creating a selfie moment in your downtown, like in a retail store, can do wonders in attracting more visitors and customers. The rapid sharing and outsourcing of opinions amongst consumers today can either make or break your downtown so make sure you provide positive moments for visitors to snap a quick and pretty selfie.

How to create a successful selfie moment downtown

First, remember to create a backdrop for the selfie to happen. This means good lighting, mirrors and attractive or significant art. Holiday lighting displays are often great backdrops, as are large sculptures, murals and gateway signs. The backdrop should also reflect the identity and brand of the downtown in order for the retweets and sharing of social media posts to be fully effective in driving interest and traffic to your downtown.

Second, make uploading the selfie easy. While stores and retailers can easily provide ipads and devices to customers, downtowns should instead think about providing free public wifi. From personal experience, I’m always more likely to upload and share content when I can easily get online. If I’m not able to instantly upload images after taking them, I’m likely to forget doing so later.

Third, provide incentives for visitors to take the selfies. With some visitors, you’ll need to nudge. Offer a chance to win a shopping trip or discounts at downtown stores if someone takes a selfie in the area and uploads it to social media. Featuring selfies taken downtown on outdoor advertisements and interactive platforms may also nudge some visitors to take photos. It’s always fun to see a photo you’ve taken up on a public platform!

Finally, make sure you aggregate the selfies and build your downtown brand through a common hashtag or downtown social media account that visitors can tag in their posts. This can help you drive traffic to your downtown website or even directly downtown! Make sure everyone on social media ‘liking’ or ‘retweeting’ posts is able to connect the selfie to your downtown.

Good apps are hard to find

Capital Riverfront BID, Washington DC

Are you considering developing an app for your downtown to promote local businesses and events? If so, it might be a good idea to take a moment to think through the pros and cons. Today we talked with Jim Blakeslee of Geocentric, a web software and interactive services firm in Bethesda, MD that works with over 30 downtown districts.  We discussed website development versus app development for downtown business directories and events marketing – his firm does both with their Citylight product, a web-based and data-driven system that tracks and maps all kinds of data within downtown boundaries. Below are some highlights from our conversation that might make the app decision easier to make.

Why you might want to pause before developing a native app

Jim cautions BIDs to think twice before developing an app for the following reasons…

Cherry Creek North BID, Denver CO.

• Apps can be duplicative of a good website. Geocentric already finds over 50% of the web traffic to downtown district websites is coming through mobile devices. Therefore, your downtown website already needs to be optimized for a phone anyway. There is limited value to creating an app that just duplicates what is already visible in browser without adding additional value.
• Many customers start their journey of information-gathering on the web. Geocentric notes that up to 75% of web traffic to district websites comes directly from Google search. Unlike websites that live on the Internet, apps are a closed system, making it more difficult for people to find the information tucked within an app. In addition, apps need to be downloaded by users before being of use to anyone – this is yet another hurdle for customers to get simple information such as what’s happening downtown this evening.  Geocentric has found that more than half of all pageviews on their clients’ downtown websites go directly to business directory and events calendar pages.
• Apps are a lot of trouble and more expensive to maintain. Native apps can be expensive. Jim quoted estimates in the range of $20-40k for a native app, compared to $10-20k for a good website. Keep in mind these estimates reflect an average range, there are apps that can cost up to $100k, and websites that can cost as little as $5k. Either way, the additional cost and time associated with developing and updating/ maintaining an app is significant. Remember, the Google Play and Apple App Stores often require apps to go through an approvals process before being made available in stores.

If you do decide to go with an app. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:

Midtown Alliance, Atlanta GA

• Make sure you have a good website first. A good app starts with a good website, one that feeds information into the app and prevents the need for double entry of importation information.
• Integrate supportive tech infrastructure downtown. Take a tip from the shopping center industry and offer free public Wifi downtown. Once the customer has signed in or connected to free Wifi, download prompts for your downtown app on the Wifi landing page can easily be created.
• Make sure the app offers something above and beyond what your website does. Apps do have the capability to do more than simply duplicate the information found on a good website, so if you are going to use it make sure you enhance its functionality by allowing for push marketing and offers/deals. This is what will help make the app useful and more appealing to download.
• Marketing is key. An app that is not promoted properly is like a tree that falls in a forest. Does it make a sound? Not if no one hears it. Make sure every business in town is actively marketing the app – one of our clients has given window clings to every business to promote the app and raises awareness of its existence.
• Measure success. According to Jim, positive growth trends in app usage and downloads is a good indicator that your downtown app is doing well. Of course, like websites, it all depends on the level of competition for news and information in your locality.  

The Social Media Story

Nur Asri is an associate at Larisa Ortiz Associates

According to retail strategist and consultant, Steve Dennis, “The most disruptive force in retail is not e-commerce but the fact that most customer journeys start in a digital channel.”

This past weekend I started my own journey to finding a perfect, new cardigan for the season online. It started at 9am on Saturday morning when I turned my phone on, checked my emails and opened the daily mail from Madewell – a women’s apparel retailer I’ve grown to trust and love. The email featured a beautiful cardigan for the Fall (just what I was looking for) and after a click, I was led directly to the product page on Madewell’s main site. After 5-10 minutes scrolling through images, checking sizes and comparing products available on the site, I wasn’t quite sold yet on the cardigan so I switched channels and browsed my Instagram feed instead. Lo and behold, one of my targeted ads turned out to be that very cardigan I had been browsing from Madewell. This time, it was being worn by a ‘regular person’ in a beautiful setting – it looked just like any other content on my Instagram feed, I barely even noticed it was an ad until I accidentally single-tapped the photo to reveal tags of the product name and price. The next day, I ventured into Manhattan to purchase said cardigan at the nearest store in SoHo. This omnichannel retail journey of mine wasn’t the first, and probably won’t be the last. In fact, according to a November 2013 survey of US digital shoppers by consulting firm Accenture, I’m not alone. 78% of respondents to the survey reported “webrooming,” or researching online before heading to a store to make a purchase.

Source: Accenture, 2013

Researching online, as demonstrated in my experience, often includes perusing social media posts by various brands and retailers. Today, roughly 2% of all e-commerce traffic in the United States now comes from social networks and continues to grow. Many of us younger consumers who are tapped into various social media channels are hence driving the rapidly growing social media influencer marketing strategy amongst retailers who want to capture as much attention as possible online. In a single year, brands are spending over $1 billion on marketing via Instagram influencers alone (Mediakix, 2017).

The history of influencer marketing can be traced back to a 1940 study entitled “The People’s Choice” by Lazarsfeld & Katz. Although the study analyzed political communication, it found that the majority of people are influenced by secondhand information and by opinion leaders. Fast-forward to 2017, people are increasingly being influenced by ‘regular people’ who have gained celebrity status or built a brand and following on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. These people are more popularly known as social media influencers.

An influencer is: “A third party who significantly shapes the customer’s purchasing decision” (Brown & Hayes, 2008) and “has a greater than average reach or impact in a relevant marketplace” (Word of Mouth Marketing Association Handbook).” From cardigan to vacation destinations, consumers are turning to influencers and their product reviews and endorsements before committing to making a purchase online or in-store.

These influencers often have credibility in a specific subject area – hiking gear, street fashion, interior design, photography – and have built a brand and following around their personalities, interests and skill sets. Their unique and trusted voices enable them to engage large, targeted audiences – the sweet marketing spot for retailers grappling to adapt to the digital age. Engaging social media influencers, however, doesn’t necessarily result in sales activity. Twitter, for example, only drove 12% of social and email generated e-commerce revenue in the fourth quarter of 2014 and only 30% of Pinterest users made online purchases after browsing Pinterest content. However, this may change as social media channels continue to introduce new call-to-action features and direct-response imperatives like “Shop Now” buttons for products and “Sign Up” buttons for services.

Social media influencers, however, have proven to be most successful at building brand awareness and trust. In fact, 92% of consumers trust an influencer more than an advertisement or traditional celebrity endorsement, according to Musefind, a social media marketing company, and 49% of consumers looked for purchase guidance from social media influencers last year. Many consumers place their trust in these influencers specifically because they are not tied directly to retailers or brands.

Source: Musefind, 2016

Of course, social media influence works differently on consumers by retail category. Some purchasing journeys are more highly influenced by the digital than others and can be more critical at different points within a single journey.

Source: Deloitte, 2015

In a 2015 study by Deloitte, consumers shopping for baby and toddler, electronics, and furniture and home furnishings products turned out to be most heavily influenced by social media during their shopping journey, while grocery customers were least influenced by digital overall. Critical interaction points started from the beginning of a consumer’s journey, during the ‘finding inspiration’ and ‘researching products’ phases, till midpoint when consumers are ready to select products for purchase.

Source: Deloitte, 2015

For the apparel retail category, the critical point for digital interaction appeared to be in the beginning of the consumer’s journey. With such a wide selection of products, over 15 percent of apparel shoppers are unaware of the product until they see a brand or retailer’s digital advertisement or communication that makes them want to buy the item, compared to an average of only nine percent across other categories. (Remember that Madewell email notifying me of the new Fall season cardigan and also the targeted Madewell Instagram ad?)

In a famous example, Lord & Taylor, designer clothing department store, proved the power of social media influencer marketing by getting 50 influencers to put on the same dress, photograph themselves in the dress, and then post the photos on social media. Within three days, Lord & Taylor sold out of the dress but more importantly, the retailer built awareness around the brand’s new collection, which resulted in a halo effect on other products in the same line.

Regardless of the varying magnitudes of impact that social media influencers have on consumers, they continue to be a strong marketing force for brands and retailers. Retailers should seek new ways to influence the influencers through their marketing campaigns or build partnerships and creative collaborations with these influencers, in order to achieve greater brand authenticity and trust amongst consumers. 

Strengthening Your Downtown Night Time Economy

Nur is an associate at Larisa Ortiz Associates

Lower East Side is a popular night-life hub in NYC

Night time economies are typically characterized by business done between the hours of 6pm and 6am. This includes a large range of economic activity taking place in food and drinking places, entertainment centers like cinemas, theaters, comedy clubs, sports and recreation facilities, and even retail stores. While these are typically labelled core night time economies, there are additional non-core night time economy sectors that you might less likely be aware of including transportation, health care and infrastructure. Around the world, many downtowns and cities are seeing an overall growth of businesses operating at night and are therefore taking proactive measures to strengthen those economic sectors that help promote the sustainability of the area.

The importance of sustaining your night-time economy

Opponents of the concept however, including residents and business owners alike, have negative perceptions of the crime and disorder that night time economies are supposed to bring. Many fear alcohol-fueled violence on the streets and heightened underage drinking offences, and as a result, higher spending on policing, emergency services and law enforcement. These potential problems of crime and violence, however, have increasingly been shown through research to be easily overcome by numerous other benefits brought by night time economies, including increased employment opportunities, increased footfall and sales for businesses from extended business hours, extended overnight visitor stays, and ironically, even improved crime and safety. In fact,a report found that a more diverse night time crowd in Belfast City not only impacted footfall but crime & anti-social behavior and perceptions statistics.

London, UK shows it has a strong Night Time Economy.

In the UK, night time economies has been estimated to value up to 27% of total town and city center turnover and between 5-10% of overall employment figures. In London, the nation's most populous city, that figure is even more impactful with 1 in 8 people employed in the night time economy. Night time footfall across a number of city centers in the UK has also been found to have outperformed figures captured during the day.

Meanwhile in Australia, a similar contribution was reported by night time economies to job creation and revenue. Between 2009 and 2013, night time economy sales increased by 20% from $90 billion to $108 billion, even higher than the broader Australian economy growth of 14% in the same period. In addition, the night time economy in Australia employs over 1 million people nationwide.

Other studies have also found that night time economies increase the vibrancy of cities through increased access to businesses, services and entertainment for residents and visitors, and promotes and markets local cultural venues that are typically only open in the day and inaccessible to most of the working population. For smaller downtowns and cities, night time economies can go so far as attracting and retaining the younger Millennial population seeking nightlife options in their place of residence, and this might even prevent a brain drain in the local workforce.

Strategies to boost the night time economy

London's Night Czar Amy Lame and Mayor Sadiq Khan

These measurable impacts of the night time economy in various parts of the world have since led more cities to take on a more comprehensive outlook on managing the night time economy, including establishing offices or commissions of the downtown night life. Many cities in Europe have taken this on including London, whose Mayor formed the Night Time Commission and appointed Amy Lamé as the city's "Night Czar". Last month,  New York City Council passed a bill allowing Mayor de Blasio to appoint a Director of Nightlife to oversee a newly-established Office of Nightlife. Regardless of title, the role of such an office and/or leader is to effectively bring together various stakeholders in the night time economy before planning and implementing a suite of strategies that will tie together all of a city's retail, cultural, entertainment attractions. In a way, these Night Mayors are really the downtown's "place managers". Their greatest task of course is to convene all of the unsung night time heroes who work to keep downtown alive and safe at night, from business owners, waiters and bartenders to security staff, police and sanitation workers. Every voice needs to be heard in the planning conversations in order to ensure the night time economy is sustainable.

Some strategies that Offices of Night Life across the world have implemented to boost the night time economy include: 

1. Coordinating extended retail and cultural institution opening hours - whether annually, bimonthly, or weekly. 
2. Implementing quality urban design features along nightlife corridors - lighting, CCTV cameras, ground floor transparency
3. Maintaining a robust night-time program that converges with business hours - light festivals, outdoor music performance, cultural events
4. Conducting a liquor law review to ensure appropriate businesses are able to serve drinks late at night
5. Creating a new or building upon an existing cultural quarter to serve as a new hub of night life

These strategies, however, must be supported by a slew of other more complex actions that are critical to ensuring a safe, viable and sustainable night time economy. Sanitation procedures must be managed and well-coordinated in order to protect the amenity of local residents and businesses without disrupting the flow of night time festivities. Garbage pick-up times, for example, may need to be revised on nights where businesses are open late and a light festival is expected to take place with over a thousand participants roaming the streets.

Public transit authorities and local cab companies also need to be in close coordination with entertainment venues and bars to ensure that late night revelers are able to travel safely before and after spending time downtown. In addition, police authorities and public safety partners must be aware of business hours and night time programs and be prepared to delegate personnel to core areas of night time economies. 

Late night business operation licenses must also be carefully granted to businesses that can demonstrate appropriate safety measures, including the ability to disperse patrons quickly and quietly when the premises closes so as not to have an adverse impact on neighbors. If the downtown does not currently allow mobile food trucks to operate in the night, it may be a good idea to extend the licenses and permits to allow for such businesses to operate late into the night so as to ensure a diverse offering of food and drinking places for patrons. 

How to know if your night time economy is successful?

Sydney produces an area profile sheet annually
to track the progress and impacts of its late-night
management stategies

London and many other cities around the world that have adopted comprehensive strategies to boost their night time economies have also begun to measure the impacts of their actions. For them, the success of a night time economy not only depends on the ability to attract a diverse range of people to a variety of activities at night, but also the ability to increase sales and tourism receipts downtown.

The easiest ways to measure these are of course total sales figures, employment statistics, visitor rates, and pedestrian counts (comparing night time figures to daytime figures, or year-on-year changes). Town centers in the UK have also taken a step further to measure qualitative impacts of their night time management plans by surveying customers and making social observations of the types of street activity and behaviors that take place during the night.

After all, monitoring and managing the process of your downtown's night time plan and strategies is a critical step in the process to ensuring long-term success of your downtown night time economy.

"Signs" of the Time: How Downtown Signage Can Drive Retail Sales

Marketing experts say that it takes 7 to 12 contacts to turn a prospect into a customer. Yet in our experience, many downtown's fail to take advantage of the opportunities they have to get in front of customers - namely through signage that captures attention. Here are a few recent examples we've come across through our work that illustrate how signage can help raise awareness of both downtown and local businesses.

Business signage - or lack there of
Visible signage is an important part of a business' marketing strategy. Consider this - an exterior sign is visible 24 hours a day and 365 days a year – raising awareness of a business even when that business is closed. Yet some communities have over regulated signs - believing that fewer or smaller signs are in "good taste".

What is down there? Hard to tell, right?  The lack of visible signage limits exploration and
make distances seem much farther away than they are, keeping customers from walking down the street. 

On the other hand, "blade" or "protruding wall" signs can help orient a pedestrian by giving them important visual cues that there are businesses down a corridor.

The businesses in touristy Great Barrington, MA do a great job of
offering signs as a form of "breadcumb" that pulls pedestrians along the street in exploration of new stores. 

Signage that isn't doing it's job
A downtown cultural anchor is a great asset - but what if most people don't know it's there?

Can you spot the Marquee for the Clemens Center in downtown Elmira?
Hint, hint - it's on the right.
During the daytime, this heavily trafficked road carries more than 12,000 vehicles.
These are 12,000 daily impressions that are being neglected. 

Cultural institutions in particular benefit from highly visible signs that also offer opportunities to promote upcoming events, like this gateway marquee marking the entrance to Downtown LA.

Painted Signs on Walls
A blank wall can be a great opportunity to help connect businesses with potential customers.

Freestanding Signs & Sandwich Boards
Many communities place restriction on sandwich boards without taking into consideration how effective they are at driving business to local stores.

This hand painted sign also reinforces the
brand of the store. You can't walk past this store
without noticing it. The lovely window display doesn't hurt either. 

This level of clutter isn't necessarily productive. Regulations can be written to
limit the places of A-frames to an area immediately in front of a business. 

Round Up: Neighborhood Renaming Prohibition, India Retail Expansion, Urban Lifestyle Centers, "CityTrees", Too Much Parking

New York Senator Wants Realtors to Stop Renaming Neighborhoods

This Next City story questions the right of the real estate industry to change neighborhood names to their likely benefit. I remember the BoCoCa (Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens) debacle a few years ago in South Brooklyn as residents vehemently resisted this name change. How enforceable could the Neighborhood Integrity Act be?

Over 50 global retailers to enter India in 6 months, likely to open about 3,000 stores

Small and mid-sized brands look to expand in India, now a very promising market on the rise with an "open retail policy and huge gap in the market for branded products." 

Making the move from the regional mall to the urban lifestyle center

The move marks an ongoing shift from enclosed regional mall or large suburban-style retail center to more urban lifestyle-focused mixed-use. National chains are adjusting to a smaller-format and community engagement.

Moss-covered CityTree has the same air-purifying effect as 275 regular trees

Not just good for the air we breath, but the CityTree could be a commercial corridor marketing tool. 

Downtown Akron is one-third parking lots: Akron Downtown Vision & Redevelopment plan asks for ideas on challenges

One-third is high but not unusual for the Midwest. Akron saw a high level of community engagement in response to an input seeking session and follows their Phase 1 session last year. 

Emerging Ideas in Community Tourism Planning - Part 2

This is the second in a three-part series exploring ways communities are playing a greater role in planning and developing their tourism industries. Guest blogger Joe Bly is a former documentary producer and writer, going beyond film and television to tell stories of social and urban progress.

Before the drama of the Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro can begin on August 5^th, and the Paralympics in September, another drama has to conclude:  preparing the city to host one of the biggest and highest profile events on the planet.  Of course, when selected in 2009, Rio was already a premier tourist destination, with tourism revenue representing 67% of the city’s GDP.  It hosted about 1 and a half million foreign tourists that year, a third of those for a single event, Carnival. 

But since then, Brazil has spent almost $12 billion upgrading nearly every level of infrastructure required to host the games.  That’s not just for specialized sports facilities and team dormitories.  The city has struggled to completely revamp its train and subway systems, water and waste management systems, and amid controversy, relocate entire residential neighborhoods.  This to host what is essentially a single, unique visitor attraction.  And every effort is stalked by questions of what is the ultimate benefit, and for whom. 

Here is where we can draw parallels and lessons for any location scaling up tourism capacity.  Even at the other end of the spectrum, a locale with little or no tourism infrastructure or resources, the issues of effective capacity building and community benefit remain the same.  So what does launching a tourism industry from scratch look like?

Community-Based Tourism

Community-based tourism (CBT) is a model in which often remote communities host visitors in the homes of residents and provide access to their unique attraction and cultural events.  The most familiar form is ecotourism.  2800 miles northwest of Rio, the Manaus region of the Amazon is home to numerous community-based ecotourism projects.  There is little tourism infrastructure deep in the jungle, but trekkers can homestay with local families, hire guides and riverboat excursions and buy local foods and handicrafts.  The cultural access is as unique an offering as the setting.  Most programs are planned and administered entirely by local residents with training and guidance provided by the government or NGOs.  The emphasis is on creating direct and sustainable economic benefit for local residents and enhancing their autonomy, while requiring little capital.  This approach to tourism is found in nearly every developing country in the world.

Yet CBT in this form is virtually nonexistent in the United States.  Could this approach be adapted to locales here that wish to develop a tourism industry where none existed before.  I found one rare example in a very small community that shares a communally held resource as exceptional as any Olympics – a cultural heritage of quilting. 

Tourist economy built by hand – Gee’s Bend, Alabama

In the heart of Alabama, there is a bow in the Alabama River wrapping around the area of Gee’s Bend so as to almost make it an island, nearly inaccessible, but for one road and a ferry.  It is a very rural home to about 200 mostly African American residents.  What puts it on the map is a long history of exquisite quilts made by generations of Gee’s Benders.  These quilts have hung in museums and art galleries, and have sold for as much as $20,000.  But Gee’s Bend had almost no ability to accommodate visitors interested in quilting and local heritage; there was little coordinated marketplace where quilts could be found, no eateries or overnight lodging, and no related cultural or historical programming.  Development grants from the Ford Foundation and tremendous assistance from groups like Sustainable Rural Regenerative Enterprises for Families (SURREF), and Auburn University, have allowed Gee’s Bend to decide collectively how to develop a community based tourism industry, physically and in expertise.

The Gee's Bend Quilt Mural Trail 

The highlights:

The Gee’s Bend town of Boykin already had a quilting collective established during the Civil Rights movement that met and worked in a community building.  This collective and building has been developed into the hub of quilt visiting, serving as a shop, museum, information center, and classroom.

An organized quilting trail and maps now help guide visitors through the area. Quilters offer overnight stays in their own homes. Staffing is local.  Marketing, sales, tours, visitor services, retail are all staffed by trained local residents.

Renovations and construction of new buildings such as additional guestlodging and a food center is done by local labor with an emphasis on locally-sourced materials.

The Gee’s Bend area now has a café, renovated guest houses, a calendar of events, and is promoted regionally and statewide.  Through community-based planning and implementation, residents are able to capture more of the economic benefits, while preserving and promoting a unique heritage.  The takeaways could apply to any locale in the US starting from scratch, and maybe even Rio.  CBT emphasizes collective decisions about how a community exploits its communal resources, and as in Gee’s Bend, every development has to maximize benefit.  More than just raise tourism revenue, any effort or investment has to cultivate ability and entrepreneurship within the community, adding mutually supportive, interlocking pieces of capacity.  I can think of no better metaphor than a quilt.

The Gee's Bend Quilting Collective in Boykin, AL

It has never been easier for a community, lacking any accommodations, to market themselves and host visitors from anywhere within their own homes – now that Airbnb and short term rentals are almost instantly ubiquitous.  Yet we do not yet see widespread community-based tourism facilitated by Airbnb.  What’s missing - the coordination.  My next post asks ‘Is any locality or community coordinating short term rental as a tourism development strategy?’