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Boutique Fitness Studio Pinpoints Ideal Locations For Expansion

There is an old real estate term rumored to have been coined by Lord Harold Samuel, a British real estate tycoon: “There are three things that matter in property: location, location, location.” This statement relates heavily in retail, because retailers — small and large — rely on finding the ideal brick-and-mortar location to maximize ROI and build a successful business.

Shred415, a boutique fitness studio that offers treadmill and weights classes, was looking to expand outside of its home base of Chicago, Ill. The company currently operates four locations in the city of Chicago, two in the suburbs of Chicago and one in St. Louis, Mo. While the Shred415 leadership knows the Chicago area very well, they were not as familiar with other regions.

“We’ve grown based upon a sense of what our demographic is, and now we are trying to tap into that in other locations where we know that demographic resides,” said Matthew Micheli, COO of Shred415, in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “So we needed to get smarter about our expansion and demographic, and understand how to tap into that.”

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To help with that discovery, Shred415 leveraged PiinPoint, a SaaS solution that enables businesses to find the best locations for  their next phase of growth. With help from PiinPoint, Shred415 was able to successfully find its first new location outside of Chicago that offers the right demographic target audience. The new facility is scheduled to open by late fall 2016. 

With one new launch under its belt, Shred415 is looking to keep the growth going. “We’re at seven locations now, and the goal is to double that in the next 24 to 36 months,” said Micheli. “Most of that growth will be outside of Chicago. PiinPoint has helped us implement a strategy by which we can look at potential markets and analyze and understand [them] before we even retain a broker and/or step foot on the ground in those markets.”

PiinPoint provides retailers with a variety of different vehicles to help hone in on an ideal location, including the ability to:

  • Search thousands of demographic variables, identify purchase patterns and determine what drives customers to specific locations;
  • Access traffic counts with real-time updates to see how many potential customers are expected to walk or drive by each location;
  • Create dynamic reports with live updates; and
  • Identify available real estate in the ideal location, which can be filtered based on needs and preferences.

Before beginning the search for new locations, Shred415 analyzed its current locations to uncover unique features that drive success for the fitness brand. The company also defined three important criteria for new facilities:

  1. A demographic with a medium to average income;
  2. An average number of workers in a household; and
  3. The number of females between the ages of 25 and 50 in the area.

“Before having PiinPoint to analyze a market effectively, we would bring on an outside broker and go visit the market, and [rely] on how well that broker understood what we did and what our demographic was,” said Micheli. “Today, we’re much better suited — as we move forward into that next phase of growth — to understand those markets, identify exactly what we need, and then go out and bring a broker on and see the spaces with a much better understanding of the market than we did before.” 

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