Well, it's 2009 and NRF is over! It was a great show even though a bit smaller but everyone i spoke with thought the quality of the attendees out weighed the quantity. The take aways this year to me were:

• Get creative with your customers
• We need to be looking at our location demographics and not just our customer demographics 
• and, engage, engage, engage!

So, here's what I'm thinking.....

Are you a Shopping Center or Mall?  What if you could get all of your tenants to join an online community in order to better focus on their customers? How?

• "I'm having a 1 day only sale of just arrived shoes Wednesday, the 15th"
• "I'm sending a mailer out to invite my customers in for a trunk sale" 
• "One of my best customers came in the other day with bags from your store. Do you know Mrs. Heath?"
• "We're thinking of doing some sort of Valentines thing, anyone else want to participate?"
• "The fashion show during our Book signing was a big hit, let's plan another one"
• "One of our customers, Ruth Crenshaw, is having twins. Does she shop with you? Would like to do a gift"
• "Guys, there is a grey Prias that parks right in front of my store every day. Does anyone know who it belongs to? 
• etc

Wouldn't your retailers  find it helpful to know what their neighbors are doing? To join with them to make creative customer focused events? To find out more about their customers and neighborhood? To grow your standing in the community? Not to mention what it would tell you about your tenants so you can provide better service for them and attract new tenants?

If that's not enough..What if this community was parked online in the middle of other similar communities of Malls and Shopping Centers so you could watch and learn from each other?

And if you're not a Shopping Center, Retailer or Mall, there is still plenty in it for you.  You may have products and/or services that might be the perfect solution for them. 

You can get started today by forming your Group in TheretailTradeCenter or contact us and let us do it for you! We can contact your tenants, create demos for them to get started, set up forms, give you ideas, whatever you need to build a successful and benefitial community...

...not Just an idea! 

Greetings Members;

Over the past several weeks, i have gotten the chance to meet a number of you.  And in doing that, I am learning more every day. Though the reasons were often due to some question or problem you were having in the site, the bottom line is, we had the chance to meet!

As I have told several of you, though I have spent over 30 years in the Retail space, I am new to the retail real estate space. How could i have missed out on this very exciting part of Retail? So many of my buddies and fellow 'insiders' know nothing about this area.

I have now realized how big this piece of the business is and i am taking steps to gain more knowledge and education around what you do in this space. I even attended my first CREW, Commercial Real Estate Women, meeting yesterday and i'm looking forward to getting more involved. 

Here's the way i see it now..In retail it's all about the

• Right location
• Right place
• Right inventory
• Right shopping experience
• Right costs
• Right environment
• Right Customer
• Right Service
  

and none of that can happen in a vacuum! It simply 'takes a village' to address all of these things and pull it off successfully for each unique Retailer. And that means, COLLABORATION. We need to know each other, share with each other and help each other achieve our goals. We are, after all, in this together though to others we may appear as competitors.

And it all starts with meeting and finding out who we all are, what we do, what we know that could benefit someone else,and who you know that might benefit me. Our site, TheRetailTradeCenter, though in it's infancy, was designed for that reason.

Hopefully you will join me in my quest to meet, connect, learn and produce better retail as a result. Drop by and say hello to me and don't forget to tell us what you are doing! 

and the great thing is, if you have any issues, problems, concerns or questions, I am always right here behind the scenes to help!

Lee Kent, Your Community Host/Coach

Please participate in our Experiment!

For those of you not familiar with FaceBook and/or Twitter, MySpace, even LinkedIn and Plaxo, this message my not mean much to you. For the rest of us, what is all the hype about my status? All of these Social Networks today ask for our status but who cares whether i'm eating a bagel for breakfast or headed to Hilton Head for the weekend? 

Let me see if this helps. If everyone in the community is there for basically the same reason this would indicate a common foundation, wouldn't it? So if we write our comments or status in the context of the community, we just might have something meaningful to share. For example, if you tell me that you are looking for tenants for a property in Florida and I also happen to be in the Commercial Retail space, this just might mean something to me and/or my job. I might even know someone else who could be interested. Or, how about if you tell me you are going to the ICSC conference in New Orleans. I might be going too and it would be great to put a face with a person i have met online.

TheRetailTradeCenter is trying a little experiment and we hope you will participate to see how it works for you. If it is a success, we will implement a more permanent solution that is a bit more user friendly. Look for the 'What are you doing?' form on you home page and drop in a note from time to time. Then check out what others have said and see if this is at all useful to you. 

If you read a note and want to find the person, we have asked each person to put in their company name or tag word so they can be found thru the search features of the site. Enter their name or tag word in the Search box that can be located on any page of the site. Or scroll down to the user name field on the Concierge page or further down to the Tag word search on the same page. Search them, add them to your network, and/or drop them a note!

If a profile does not have the Add as Contact or Leave a Private Message feature then we can help you find them. Just let us know.

It's that easy!

Your Community Coach 

Hey Members/Guests!

Would you guys be interested in having a theme/topic for every month or maybe every other month?

• Whoever can contribute something to the topic would be encouraged to do so?
• We could set aside times for some live chats maybe?
• We could have a bulletin board where anyone could post?
  
• We could invite experts to share on the topic?
• and you could drop in virtually to see and participate?

What do you think?

Just hit the comment button below or simply add to this thread to share your thoughts. You will, of course, need to be signed-in.

Greetings Members!

As we have had so many new members join our Center, i have been 'watching' you! Just call me Big Sister but in a good way. My objective is to help you all find what you are looking for and make the most of our collaboration platform. Let me tell you what i see. Almost everyone who visits the Center each day, actually joins.

• We have been seeing only about a 22% bounce rate. (for those of you marketing folks who know about such terms) 
  
• You are visiting on average 11 pages
• and staying on average 6minutes

This tells us that you are 'checking it out'. That is an OK thing. The next step though is to really start using the site. So let me see if i can offer some suggestions.

• Make sure you set your pictures to display in the Photo Gallery, you do that in your profile. Then put Tag words on your pictures. This way if someone is looking for property in Florida and you have property in Florida, they can search on the Tag words and find your pictures and thus find you. Get it?
  
• Next, if you join a Group, look below the Member icons and set the Group to 'Watch'. This way you will be notified if someone posts something to your Group. We are hoping to automate this feature.
• If you provide any type of service to a Retailer then you should be set up as a Vendor. This will give you a full profile to tell everyone what you do. If you have registered incorrectly, let us know. We can fix it.
• Use the Search feature at the top of every screen or at the bottom of the Concierge page to find others that you would like to know or already know. Then connect with them.
  

•  and Finally SHARE! When you stumble across something of interest to your Group, place the URL on a post so others can see it
• If you have had an interesting experience with a client or vendor, Create a Blog post and tell people about it.
  
• Let others know what you are good at or what you would like to know more about.

That's a Good Start!

Lee Kent, Your Retail Community Coach

Greetings Members, I need your help!

Now just because i said that i needed your help, please don't run away. It won't cost you ANYTHING. It's just that i need to get up to speed on Real Estate. You see, since i spoke at the ICSC Real Estate Research Conference early October, we have picked up some 1000 new members!

I am ecstatic and i know it had NOTHING to do with me but EVERYTHING to do with your desire to collaborate. That is exactly why our site exists and we want to help you achieve your goal. I have offered a few pointers in my postings below but it would sure help a lot if i knew more about the kinds of things you guys would like to share and learn from each other.

I can facilitate posting these requests and finding people willing to share with you. I might even be able to get some collaboration tools set up for you to use. 

If you would simply take a minute and drop me a note or better yet, post a comment on this posting just to let me know what you would like to share or collaborate on, that would be great! You could also tell me things that maybe you are a go-to person on. Now this is not the place or the time to post your own personal ad but it is the time to introduce yourself to the Group.

We also have a wiki set up in the Real Estate research Group and this would be a great place for you to introduce yourself as well.

Remember we get what we put in, so let's participate and make this a great site for you! 

Lee Kent, Your Retail Community Coach 

Follow my Twitter conversations here! You will only see my side but feel free to join Twitter and follow me live @Lhkent

For those of you joining us at TheretailTradeCenter, i want to share some of my thoughts about 'effective' networking and sharing. I have been active in the social media space for quite some time now so i am going to base my comments on my own expereinces.

1. NOONE likes being SOLD to. If you want people to know who you are and what you have to offer, start by sharing information with them. And this information does not always have to be yours. Build your credibility by sharing the work of others... with a few of your own from time to time 
2. Let people know that you are a go-to person by sharing often and make it interesting, maybe even fun
   
3. 10min of your day to read, write and respond is WORTH it
   
4. ALWAYS use your real voice. No stiff advertising speak. Be yourself!
   
5. Encourage conversation by asking questions
   
6. Build your 'relationship currency' by trying to answer someone else's questions
   
7. If you have a paper or presentation to share, ask if the group would be interested
   
8. Offer to find persons who may know about a subject in question
   
9. Remember it is about meeting people that you really want to know
   
10. and maybe working with them later!
    

So just jump right in and PARTICIPATE! It's FUN!

Lee Kent, Retail Community Coach