US Retail Centers

The history of the Internet has been based largely on static data sources such as demographics, consumer information, business locations, government sites and many databases that are updated annually or at other intervals, if at all. The future of the Internet is based on live sources of data tied directly to what is happening in the world via search engines or other smart, live technologies. USRetailCenters.com offers one of the first examples of a database which is “live” and refreshed daily or weekly.

How it works:

• TheRetailPlanet has is own proprietary search engine technology that uses a meta-search engine, special text mining filters and agents to mine information on retail activity and shopping centers.
• Shopping centers and retail areas have a direct presence on the Internet through their names, through news and other reports on the area around the center and through the retailers in each center or retail area.
• Our database contains millions of search links that connect retailers, centers, news and geographic areas.
• When changes take place in the retail world that can be monitored online through announcements or news from any of the above sources, that information is worked automatically into our databases. When Subway opens in the new mall down that street that data is available in hours, not weeks, months or years.

TIME: The Missing Dimension

Our search engine technology offers not only the opportunity to refresh databases monthly, weekly, daily --- or as appropriate --- it adds the key dimension that is missing from all current demographic and business databases today, TIME. By using our vertical search capability to look at over 100,000 sources for news related to the past, present and future of a specific center, retail cluster or market, we have a way, when you are looking at a specific center/area, to help you address key questions such as:

• What’s the history of this center? Why did two major retailers vacate last year? Why has performance always been above or below average?
• What decisions has the city made recently concerning the limited access road feeding this retail area, which retailers have announced they are coming or expanding, why does the NRA rate this as one of the hottest trade areas in the state?
• What new major center will open a year from now, down the street? How will zoning regulations impact future competition? What new neighborhood development plans were approved for the next five years?

A question for the founders of USRetailCenters.com:

Your competitors in this space have teams of real estate people on the ground actually visiting shopping centers and talking with owners about current and potential retailers. Is your data actually better than the information collected from being there?

The short answer is that the web today is a live, interactive medium that brings together people, places and information almost instantly, in real time. There is definitely a place for businesses that collect information “in the field” about retailers and centers (please see our section on competition) just as it is comfortable and practical to have a dictionary sitting by your computer; however, when you need information about any subject today, where do you go first, the dictionary or the Internet?

Our current database of centers and retail areas is “good” by our standards but far from perfect. We know that as retailers open or close in retail areas or new centers come online, there are often gaps in the knowledge that are difficult to spot online or physically. We still find redundancies in our data and missing center locations or retail locations --- most of which will be corrected over the next six months. The key question here is where you place your bets for the future. If you are collecting these data physically or with surveys of center owners, there are limits on how often you can visit or survey with a finite number of staff and what information an individual knows about the center or retail area. Working through the Internet space, however, we have thousands of smart agents gathering data by monitoring millions of connections that, over time, will only grow smarter and more complete.

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