Evaluating potential store sites can be a time-consuming process. For companies on a fast-growth track in multiple markets, however, expediting that process without sacrificing accuracy is critical.

Pet Supermarket, a 100-plus store chain, is opening 20 locations per year, and recently began using a solution from geoVue that can cut site evaluation time from days to minutes.

Sunrise, Fla.-based Pet Supermarket’s sites are concentrated in its home state, the Atlanta area and North Carolina, but it is currently entering new markets with an aggressive new-store schedule. The family-owned company carries more than 8,000 pet products, supplies and medicines in stores ranging in size from 4,500 to 11,000 sq. ft.

The chain’s relationship with Woburn, Mass.-based geoVue began more than four years ago and has evolved over time, according to Diane Holtz, president and COO of Pet Supermarket. “We started by using their mapping and demographic data,” she says.

“Then last year we made a big leap forward by using iPREDICT,” a program that evaluates each neighborhood within a market to determine the most likely customers, the frequency of their visits and how much they will spend. To generate that information, Pet Supermarket supplied its customer address database (minus names) to geoVue.

Using geoVue’s software, Pet Supermarket learned who its customers really are. “We have customers in their 20s for whom a pet is a substitute [for a] child, young families purchasing ‘starter pets’ and empty nesters, which is the group with the highest growth volume,” Holtz says. “Sixty percent of all Americans own pets, so the potential for purchasing pet supplies doesn’t depend upon high income. All consumers with pets will spend.”

Based on Pet Supermarket’s customer address database and demographic data, geoVue generated a list of the top 100 markets with the greatest potential for strong pet supply sales volumes. “We were already in some of the cities listed,” Holtz says, but the results also identified cities where a second store would be viable. Next, geoVue’s iPLAN software showed Pet Supermarket where to locate within the targeted cities.

       

Using iPLAN, the first step in site selection is building a market area. Regression analysis modeling then is employed to forecast sales volumes and establish benchmarks for selected sites. “The software estimates the degree of sales cannibalization between sister stores and also how a location’s sales volume might grow if we closed a store — or if one of our competitors did,” Holtz says.

The software’s ability to predict store sales based on type of location (strip mall, stand-alone), adjacent competition, the effect of co-anchors and other factors are important to Pet Supermarket, she says.

iPLAN Lynx, the web-based version of geoVue’s software, should further speed Pet Supermarket’s site-selection process. “It used to take us two hours to run a site analysis on Miami because it is urban and very dynamic,” Holtz says. “With the web version of the program, all reports ran in minutes.”

Being able to determine the viability of a site when in the field or in a meeting is especially valuable when multiple sites and markets are being considered. “Almost immediately, we can see what will happen in a market, how much a new store will do in volume and how a new store will affect our other units,” Holtz says.

For retailers using iPLAN Lynx, there are no on-site upgrades required for software so there is no impact on their networks or IT departments.

Enter, expand, exit
Identifying new growth opportunities and maximizing existing store performance “are the two most significant ways in which a retailer can increase the value of its chain,” says geoVue founder James Stone. His company optimizes site-selection by developing predictive store trade areas which allow clients to decide which markets to enter, expand or exit. Clients also can discover how to optimize their networks of stores in each market and how to localize marketing and merchandising.

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