Shlomo Chopp, a New York commercial real estate entrepreneur, thinks he's found a way to help mom-and-pop and digitally native retailers solve the logistics puzzle of getting goods to consumers - and it centers on creating a hybrid of stores with logistics centers in former big-box department stores.
Chopp, managing partner of Case Equity Partners of Brooklyn, New York, formed a company, Shopfulfill, that will offer a network of locations filled by several retailers and last-mile fulfillment centers. Chopp said he is working with Jones Lang LaSalle broker Larry Kilduff and Matt Powers, head of JLL's retail/e-commerce distribution group, to identify locations and negotiate leases for them.
If all goes as planned Shopfulfill will have five shopping fulfillment centers opened along the Eastern Seaboard, including one of two in North Carolina, by year end, Chopp said at Monday's JLL ICSC party in Las Vegas. A typical 100,000-square-foot location would comprise 30% retail space and 70% logistics space.
Chopp and his partners are targeting vacant spaces in malls for their operations first locations. "People will shop in the stores' showrooms, and the retailers will ship products directly from the same building," he said.
Shopfulfill has partnered with "a significant logistics company" to provide the last-mile delivery, but Chopp declined to identify it.
"I Won a Tesla!"
Right after Barbara Wilkinson of Montgomery, Alabama, won a Tesla and $25,000 cash at CoStar Group's giveaway at the ICSC RECon show in Las Vegas, she called her husband to share the good news.
"You're not going to believe what just happened to me," Wilkinson told him while sitting in the driver's seat of her new Model S. "I won a Tesla!"
She was right. He didn't believe it.
Wilkinson, a development manager at Jim Wilson & Associates, won the car and cash after three others lost out on the electric automobile because you had to be present to win. They weren't.
North Austin Is Apple of Texas Firm's Eye
Pohl Partners, a brokerage firm based in Austin, is doing a lot of work in the Texas city's northwest suburbs, thanks to the draw of Apple's planned campus in North Austin.
"There's a pattern of growth to the northwest of Austin in area including Liberty Hill, and excitement about Apple's campus gets a slice of the credit,"Pohl broker Colleen Miller said Monday after Marcus & Millichap's annual retail outlook.
Austin has emerged as a major U.S. technology hub with big wins from Apple, Google and Facebook. Apple, maker of iPhones, iPads and Macbooks, is expected to add up to 15,000 new jobs over the next few years in Austin, where it will build a $1 billion campus.
Phol specializes in marketing raw land for development, and business is good, thanks to all those new jobs that create the need for additional housing and retail in the North Austin area, President Bill Pohl said. However, he perplexed by a recent movement to slow construction of new roads just as the companies create new jobs that will attract more people to the city. "We'll see how that works out," he said.
