Site Assessment Service to Help Retailers Find Their Forte

UK-based retail analysis specialist Cartogen has launched a service promising to make preliminary analysis of potential new sites 'effective and affordable' for smaller businesses such as shops, bars, cafes, restaurants, health clubs and salons.

The firm says a high proportion of the many first-year failures among smaller retailers fold because 'they are situated in a poor location where there may be a lack of suitable clients living or working close to their chosen site', adding that multiple retailers devote major resources to ensuring that potential new sites will be profitable and match their target market.

The phrase 'location, location, location' is nowhere more appropriate than in the retail sector. Multi-millionaire hospitality entrepreneur Sir Charles Forte famously chose the most expensive and least well-developed of three potential sites for his first food bar, after standing on each plot and 'counting the hungry mouths' passing.

Cartogen is headed by Stephen Kennedy whose background has been with a number of large retailers including Superdrug and Shell. Cartogen's retail location planning service provides a combination of actual retail data and the latest geodemographic information. The company is able to present a comprehensive view of any trading location, both in terms of commercial performance and customer profiles.

The service uses EuroDirect's CAMEO profiling system to indicate the mix of customer types within any particular catchment area, including their purchasing behaviour, and helps cross-analyse this against the specific business in question. Demographic data such as age, ethnicity, family structure, employment status and housing type is included along with lifestyle and behavioural aspects such as leisure activities, media use and purchase of goods. It also uses GMAP Consulting's RetailVision system to provide sales and mix information on retailers currently trading in any of around 5,000 retail centres, including which categories over- or underperform in particular locations.

The firm is online at www.cartogen.co.uk .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.