Posted onMay 29, 2025|Comments Off on I LOVE THE MOVIES!!!
The smell of buttered popcorn, the cool sensation of frosty Pepsi in my mouth, and an afternoon of escape into a new and exciting world, this is what the movies meant to me. As a kid, I spent endless hours on these magical, plush red seats.
For years, cinemas were our first and most affordable choice for entertainment. Movies were the anchor for some of the best retail in the United States, aping the days when we went downtown for all our entertainment, be it a shopping trip, a movie, a delicious dinner at our favorite restaurant or maybe even a play. While many of us are not old enough to remember those days, they are certainly the model for modern entertainment districts.
Not surprisingly, the Pandemic, streaming, and other technology that allows entertainment and games in the palm of our hands have significantly affected the cinema industry. The North American Box Office Gross (NABOG) in 2023 and 2024 was between $8.5-$9.0 Billion, a drop from the Pre-Pandemic era of $11-$12 billion or approximately 70%. But even before the pandemic, NABOG was not growing, but hovering, as shown below:
Source: BoxOfficeMojo.com by IMDbPro and JB Research Company
In the last 40 years, 1984-2024, compound annual growth rate of cinema revenue has been 2.8%, while the population of the U. S. has increased only 1.0% on the same basis. As a reference, the North American Amusement and Theme Park gross revenue increased at a rate of 5.0% per annum in the past 26 years. Remember, inflation has been 2.6% in the past 26 years, so the real rate of growth is 2.4% for Amusement and Theme Parks. Adjusted for inflation (2.6% for the past 40 yrs.), cinemas revenue has been fairly stagnant in the period. This is a somewhat disappointing point of view.
What are a few of the reasons for stagnation, even prior to the Pandemic:
Technology, including television even before streaming became available to all.
Shifts in consumer behavior and preferences
Shifting Demographics, including the aging of the U. S. population
The availability of quality film product and again, preferences of the moving going public
Over screening
With all of this disappointing news, there are some bright spots on the horizon. First, theaters are seeking to change the business model. While almost half of cinema revenue still comes from ticket sales, other revenue streams are growing. Some new points of differentiation include:
The availability of premium large format screens
Enhanced seating
Enhanced Food and Beverage, including the highly profitable sale of alcoholic beverages
Adoption of theaters as public assembly facilities offering opportunities for live events, gaming, sports, opera, kids movies and other programming.
I grew up going to the movies as a special treat. In my heart, I hope that theaters can evolve with the times and remain as sparkling, special places where one can lose oneself in a special environment for a few hours. Lord knows we need these safe escapes in our very chaotic world!
Posted onJanuary 27, 2025|Comments Off on Exploring Boomer Spending Trends: Insights for Marketers
Unlocking the Spending Power of Boomers
Americans are a diverse group, and their spending reflects it beautifully. Look at the picture above and the chart below and you will discover that Boomers spend the lowest of overall per capita, but they rival Millennials in their entertainment spending. Yet when you casually observe advertising in any format, digital or print, you rarely see a senior enjoying themselves on an adventure tour, or on an expensive trip to a theme park. Doesn’t make sense!
The percentage of global population by demographic cohort and estimated spending shows a similar situation:
Generation
Share of population (2024)
Global spending (2024)
Gen Alpha
19.5%
10.6%
Gen Z
24.6%
17.1%
Millennials
22.9%
22.5%
Gen X
18.3%
23.5%
Baby Boomers
12.1%
20.8%
Greatest and Silent Generation
2.6%
5.5%
Understanding these percentages assists in understanding the social and economic impacts that each generation has on our industry.
When comparing the population percentages with spending percentages, the following observations can be made:
Baby Boomers: Although they make up 12.1% of the population, their spending represents 20.8%, highlighting their substantial economic influence.
Millennials: Represent 22.5% of the population and their spending is almost the same.
Gen X: Consist of 18.3% of the population but account for 23.5% of spending. This generation shows a higher spending power relative to their population size.
These comparisons reveal that while some generations may have a smaller population size, their economic impact through spending can be disproportionately large, reflecting their purchasing power and consumption patterns.
Boomers, despite being the lowest in overall per capita spending, rival Millennials in entertainment expenditures. They enjoy expensive vacations, gifts for family, and trips abroad, highlighting their substantial economic influence in the entertainment sector.
How often do you see an ad for anyone over 65 doing anything but taking drugs? But they have money and spend money on expensive vacations, gifts for their family, and trips abroad.
If you are concerned about your return on investment and you are in the entertainment field, why aren’t you pitching to this group? Just common sense, don’t you agree?
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Posted onJanuary 12, 2025|Comments Off on Reviving Community – New Trends in Location Based Entertainment
Now more than ever, we need places for people to congregate and connect. With every lifestyle, regional, and community center showing big empty spaces from tenants that have gone dark (due to Covid-related loss) or just bad management and strategy, innovation is the key to rebranding and renewed Covid has been catastrophic for business with major shutdowns and the explosion of e-commerce.
But some things can’t be replaced, and I believe will never be replaced, such as the need for connection and communal gathering places. The isolation and emancipation screens bring for young and old elicits a more urgent need for human contact. As good designers, developers and owners, we can provide interesting, exciting and innovative experiences, and we can bring visitors back to our shopping centers.
The genres of new concepts are as old as the shopping centers themselves and as new as technology will allow. Here are some of the notable Location Based Entertainment (LBE’s) we think are reinventing the genres.
Eataly
Eataly is the delicious Italian gourmet food market/food court on steroids, with 10 locationsin the United States, including New York and Los Angeles.
Eataly is a global operator in Italian food, offering a concept combining high-end Italian food restaurant with retail.
Eataly’s business model was built around the “eat-shop-learn” concept, offering consumers globally a selection of high-quality Italian restaurants and retail experiences with an overwhelming variety of the finest Italian local “specialties” often impossible to buy abroad.
Eataly operates 27 directly operated flagship stores (14 in Italy, 10 in North America and 3 in Europe) and 26 franchised stores located in the Asia Pacific countries and Middle Eastern region, generating revenues of over €800 million globally (including franchise store sales). This indicates average store sales of £15 million per location.
Eatertainment and Sports
I hate the word Eatertainment, but it has become common in our lexicon. The concept involves combining eating and drinking with fun, sports and games. Anything from baseball to golf to bowling to curling (yes, curling!) are tapped to be themes for these venues, which fit nicely into a retail or mixed-use project.
The first class includes many new restaurants which offer simulators for popular sports such as golf and Formula 1 car racing. Top Golf is the most popular sports themed venue with the highest number of units and top grossing sales per unit of the new sports/food/beverage concepts. This concept combines golf simulators and games with food and beverage. The company offers more than 100 plus units with total sales of almost $1.8 billion, average sales per unit of $17-$18 million on newer units sized at approximately 65,000 square feet. Gross margins are known to be about 40%, indicating an EBDITA of $6.8 million. With an industry standard payback of four years, this indicates a warranted investment of more than $27 million, or $415 per square foot. This is the most proven and mature business model of the sports/food & beverage models.
Other models include:
F1 Arcade is based on iconic Formula One racetracks and is offered in Boston, Washington DC, Las Vegas and London. Featuring craft cocktails and seafood, Kobe beef, and bar fare with an upscale theme, the venue allows entrance to customers from 7 years of age and older. The Boston unit is approximately 16,000 square feet. Kindred Concepts, the parent company, recently raised $130 million in financing for expansion.
Camp Pickle is scheduled to debut in Denver and Tulsa in 2025. This new attraction will be like an old-time summer camp, the kind your grandparents attended. Of course, Pickle Ball is the theme, and food beverage and other activities are offered.
Spin is a concept created by Susan Sarandon in New York in 2009, themed on competitive ping pong. With locations in New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, Philadelphia, Seattle and Washington DC, the menu provides farm to table, locally sourced food. Units range in size from 4,000-12,000 square feet, fitting nicely into a shopping center configuration.
SixesSocial Cricket offers competition in a sport that many Americans know nothing about… Cricket, with karaoke offered as backup! The food is said to be excellent, featuring typical bar-fare. Bookings include an adjoining table for food and beverage. The first U.S. unit is in Dallas at the Colony.
Goodsurf is an 8,000 square foot sports restaurant based on surf simulator technology that allows waves to be created by machines, taking much less space than a typical wave pool. Food offerings include burgers, fries, vegetarian options, and ice cream for the kids. The first location is in Dallas.
Flight Club is a high-tech dart simulation game with seven units located in the United States in Las Vegas, Denver, Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Boston, and Chicago. The food offerings are gourmet versions of flat breads, tacos, salads and fries. The newest unit is in Denver at 10,000 square feet, close to Coors Field and the Ball Arena.
Culture
My favorite in this category is Meow Wolf, which began in 2008 as a collective of anarchic artists in Santa Fe (NM). It offers interactive installations, each with a different theme. The attraction offers six locations including Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Houston, Washington, and Denver. Each location has a different immersive art theme with hundreds of storytellers from throughout the world and local artists’ features.
The newest and largest store is located in Denver and features more than 70 immersive attractions in 90,000 square feet. (The Houston location is only 32,000 square feet.) Convergence Station, as it is called, is a multiversal travel experience between four alien worlds, inspired by the location near two freeway overpasses.
The newest store is scheduled to open in 2026 and is in final lease negotiations that will bring a Meow Wolf exhibition to West Los Angeles. The location is a vacant movie theater complex. The theme will be cinema. Meow Wolf’s move into its largest market yet is intended as a statement piece, a declaration that weirdness and art-focused ventures still have a place in an immersive economy that’s been racked by closures and layoffs, Meow Wolf included.
In April, Meow Wolf announced it would cut 165 employees. Exhibitions in Denver and Las Vegas were heavily affected.
General admission is $40 for adults and $35 for children and passes are available. The business model is based on buying/leasing low value properties in subsidy rich locales.
Destruction LBE’s
Can we talk about Las Vegas, the lab for all new location-based entertainment? How about Dig This, with an admission price of almost $205? This is a wrecking lot with real earth-moving machines, caterpillar D5Ks, bulldozers, and mini excavators. With instructions being the first step, a neon yellow vest and a hard hat are provided with in-cab training. Then, you get turned loose to wreck real things like a car! This is about the most male-oriented attraction of those researched!
Adventure and Technology Driven Formats
Location based virtual reality is a whole world unto itself with a following that includes mostly young boys and men. But the industry is making a Location Based-Social interaction with games to engage the consumer in a community experience. Some of the themes include war, exploration, and adventure. Research shows that female consumers are loving some of these group games, those that don’t require you to keep a body count!
(Now maybe I’m old-fashioned, but explain this to me. A whole bunch of your friends put things over their eyes where they can’t see each other nor speak to each other, nor touch each other. These are group games that seem to me to be a totally weird way to connect. Just this consultant’s opinion, but I think we have lost our way in terms of entertainment value and the sense of connection that is required to be human!)
Still, one concept is killing it!
Sandbox VR is a location-based concept out of the UK and Ireland, with two locations in the UK (one in London, one in Birmingham), and 31in the United States. Of these, seven are in California, one in Chandler (AZ) and another in Mall of America (MN). The average spend is £37 in the UK and $55 in the United States. The UK locations earn between $1.9-$2.6 million, with an EBITDA of 35%. Capital expenditure on the equipment ranges from $500,000-$750,000. Buildout of the average 5,000-6,000 sqft location ranges from $1.5-$3.0 million, cost of which is borne by the lease and/or can be negotiated with the landlord. The games are story driven and can change constantly. Collaborations with Netflix and Paramount are planned to provide content.
At the writing of this blog, Sandbox VR launched a game based on Netflix’s Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon.” This experience has players “gear up with their fellow rebels for battle against the ruthless forces of the Motherworld’s military,” per the game’s description. “Inspired by the vision of legendary director Zack Snyder, players become members of the resistance and are transported to the planet of Daggus, descending through skyscrapers, streets, and a subterranean mine while they defeat enemy soldiers and spacecraft.”
With the development of operating economics reported, this is one of the first VR experiences to complete a “proof of concept” and earn economic industry-standard return.
Intellectual Properties
My favorite location-based entertainment center based on an IP is the Crayola Experience. This format is based on (what else) the iconic Crayola Brand, with the flagship attraction in Easton (PA), where the factory and headquarters are located. At 65,000 square feet, and with lots of colorful activities to do, the attraction boasts an adult/child entry fee of $26.99. Other locations include Chandler (AZ), Bloomington (MN), Orlando (FL), and Plano (TX). Activities offered are very creative such as the Activities Studio, The Cartoon Creator, and the Adventure Lab.
In 2022, the brand began a licensing concept. The growth strategy presented in 2022 includes extending the location-based entertainment footprint domestically and internationally. “We are now looking to develop licensing partnerships that bring new capital and expertise to accelerate our LBE expansion, particularly internationally where local market access and expertise are important,” said Victoria Lozano, Executive Vice President Digital Strategy, GM Attractions & Retail for Crayola.
The first Crayola Experience opened 25 years ago as The Crayola Factory in Easton (PA). Crayola saw an opportunity in LBE and in 2013 reimagined the downtown attraction as Crayola Experience. The company also owns and operates Crayola Experiences in Orlando (FL), at the Mall of America in Bloomington (MN), in Plano (TX), and in Chandler (AZ). With venues ranging from 20,000-60,000 square feet, Crayola Experience engages more than 1.5 million kids and adults annually in activities inspired by/and incorporating proprietary Crayola products and technologies.
Crayola is continuing to develop creative concepts that will help scale its events and exhibitions LBE business. Early this year, Crayola debuted IdeaWorks at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute, a traveling exhibition encouraging families to explore innovation, invention and design thinking. The company also collaborated with OceanX, a global ocean exploration nonprofit, on a national takeover tour of the Crayola Experience venues that began this summer and runs through summer 2022.
Other notable concepts of IP-based LBE’s include the LEGO Discovery Centers, branded popup retail locations with characters such as Barbie and Peppa Pig. Today, studios and other IP owners are monetizing their brands by creating places where their properties can be owned or licensed out to the LBE owner. One great example is MONOPOLY LIFESIZED, created by Habro (self-explanatory), and Sony has opened a division to license its intellectual properties for developers.
Other retail pop-ups with a brand LBE include Hello Kitty pop-up cafes, the Rolling Stones pop-ups, and the Barbie branded sales areas at Selfridges in London.
Conclusion
Most of the examples presented must continue proof of concept and financial goals. We hope many will stand the test of time and blossom to enrich our industry!
What are your favorites? Let us know, we always love your input and experiences!
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Posted onSeptember 21, 2024|Comments Off on Holidays 2024! Have We Landed Softly?
With 44 days left until the election and 96 days left until Christmas, I wanted to look at some happy news! I was having happy hour wine with friends last week, and the subject of shopping came up, as it always does. Since retail is my vocation and avocation, I was anxious to hear about what they will be doing for this holiday season. Would they cut spending, are they traveling, what items are they coveting to give to their friends and family?
This is the question on industry minds right now since retail sales in November and December comprise about 19% of annual spending. In the past ten years, retail sales have increased as follows:
The holiday total, which is not adjusted for inflation, includes online and other non-store sales, which were up 8.2% at $276.8 billion. Currently ecommerce comprises 16% of all retail sales.
In 2018, at the beginning of the pandemic, holiday sales were $691 billion. The sales increased to $964 billion in 2023. With all the unprecedented events emerging from the pandemic (inflation, supply chain issues, fed interest rate hikes, online retail sales, consumer fatigue with lack of human connection), the time series is at best flawed. Still, an easy calculation puts the 10-year CARG at 5.1% and the 5-year CARG at 3.4%. But adopting any time series is necessary considering the years of Covid shutdowns, which severely affected retail sales. In the early Covid period, growth was terribly slow but picked up significantly in 2020 and 2021 when most of the Covid restrictions were lifted and consumers were itching to get back out, visit friends, buy buy buy and travel!
Based on our experience, the data (both long term and short term, as well as other prognosticators) indicate nominal sales will grow between 2.5% and 3.5% this 2024 season, to reach an estimated $993 billion… or let’s just say an even TRILLION. A soft landing indeed!
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Summer is a time for fun, for vacation, for surfside romps, for visits to the county fair, for baseball games, for seeing friends and drinking wine. This summer was both the same and also very different. While I did all of these things, I did it with family, my big noisy crazy, dysfunctional family including husband, kids, grandkids, sibling and of course in-laws and extended family. But we didn’t go to some exotic island where the summer sun shines 20 hours a day, nor did we jet off to African for a Safari (which is still on my bucket list). This summer was the beautiful California locales, all close by. The summer turned out to be the “summer of love”.
Family vacations evoke all sorts of images, like group cooking in an always beautiful Italianate kitchen, grandparents playing with tiny humans who may look like them, sisters romping on the front lawn doing cartwheels, kids fighting and hitting each other, and many secrets which are best left unshared. But at the bottom of all these images is the reality of spending time with the only people who provide unconditional love, who look like you, who know what you have been through because they have been through it too.
This year was especially memorable for me because my tiny doppelgangers, my grandkids, were old enough to be out of their parents arms, and become their own little people, able to play and love independently.
And because I have rewired my brain, and practiced becoming my best self, I was able to be there and enjoy these precious moments.
It all seems so simple, so natural, so “yeah, of course that’s what happens”, but in fact this is something extremely difficult, requires hard work and is entirely new to me.
In January this year, Sony opened its 45,000 square foot Wondervse in a suburb of Chicago at the Oak Brook Mall. The “Location-Based Entertainment” Center (LBE) offers immersive experiences and food and beverage based on Sony’s extensive library of intellectual properties. Currently, Jumanji, Bad Boys, Uncharted, and Ghostbusters provide the basis of the themed areas, although many “pop-up” and changing exhibits are envisioned. The center attempts to combine every popular out-of-home entertainment concept, including virtual reality, an escape room, bumper cars, and food and beverage, all branded as Sony/Columbia well-known films.
Though development cost has not been publicly disclosed, we imagine the cost at $1,000 to $1,500 per square foot, putting the attraction at $45 million to $65 million. That’s a lot of investment to recoup, no matter what you pencil in as the NOI or payback period.
From 1993 through 1997, almost 30 years ago, JB Research Company provided market, consumer and financial feasibility research and consulting for an untested proof-of-concept entertainment product which morphed into the now defunct Metreon in San Francisco and Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. We did this type of feasibility testing for locations in San Francisco, Chicago, Denver and Tokyo. The new product was a location-based concept, also based on Sony brands, but in very different brand exercise than the Wonderverse concept. At that time, Sony (Japan) wanted the world to understand and brand-integrate their different companies that offered music, television, motion pictures, motion picture theaters and video games, all under the Sony brand. Well, that didn’t work! The only location to be built with the eventual Moniker of “Metreon” failed, then hung on for decades reimagining its core entertainment concepts as popular retail/dining and entertainment, then finally closed in 2023. The project is now an AMC theater (originally a Sony Theater) and a massive Target in the SOMA district of San Francisco, right across from the Moscone convention center. The cost, never disclosed publicly, was more than $250 million!
Our practice centers on helping companies make decisions based on potential profitability. The model for a profitable attraction is simple:
NOI x Payback Period = Development Cost
NOI is Net Operating Income and Number of Years is determined by the Industry Standard Payback. Development cost is really what you should/or can afford to spend based not on what you want to do or what the designer/engineers/creative people tell you, but what the economics dictate.
Every imaginable scenario can be tested by varying the three numbers in this formula. It’s the secret sauce for any attraction ever built or imagined.
Income is always based on attendance, and in an indoor attraction, that is based on the capacity of the venue on its “Design Day,” which is any of the 15 to 20 busiest days of the year. (Capacity should never be built for the highest attended day of the year. That’s very wasteful and doesn’t pencil.) Indoor attractions are capacity constrained, so this value is always one of the most important determinants of potential profitability.
We are waiting anxiously and patiently to see how Wonderverse plays out in terms of attendance, revenue and profitability. In the meantime, we would love to hear from you on what you think of the whole “back to the future” paradigm for LBE’s. Tell us what you are working on to make your new bright ideas pencil!
Posted onMay 2, 2024|Comments Off on Museums Are Telling Stories That Need to be Told
We need a new word for “museum” which calls to mind blank white walls with paintings created by old white men depicting gorgeous scenes of beautiful ladies sitting waterside with flowers and picnics. Don’t get me wrong, these are pleasing images and I love looking at them. But it turns out their interest and subjects leave out about 90% of the population in the world.
The world has changed. The arts are a reflection of our society and our cultural mores. And baby, “the times they are a changin”. In response, museums are listening to the outcry. The modern audience is new, fresh, young, black, brown, yellow, LBGTQ, female, elder, street-wise, colorful! They want to hear about music, history, life-experience, and feeling they understand, both within (or without) the walls of our institutions.
While museums are normally thought of as staid and conservative, our most progressive institutions, those that have realized they must change or perish, are singing a new song. They are changing the location, experience, design, subject, and setting. They are ENGAGING new audiences.
Last week’s New York Times offered two sections on Museums. “More to see, do and feel -Museums are striving to expand the experiences of their visitors.” Rock on, I say. Some examples:
Christopher Wool decided that because galleries are so staid and expected, he would show his famous and very expensive sculptures in a raw industrial space within an office building in Manhattan. He says in an interview that “Imperfection is the goal. You get tension with imperfection and small amounts of chaos in these pieces, which is strengthened by how unfinished and raw the space is.”
All over the United States from San Francisco, Charleston, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, and Philadelphia, new museums are exploring outdoor spaces as an integral part of the experience. They are creating welcoming, collaborative spaces, where guests feel inspired and also engulfed by beauty. Landscaping and sculptures, street furniture, water, wind are melded together to form an alchemy of stories in these outdoor spaces, which are not gardens, by any stretch of the imagination.
In North Miami, the story of Haiti’s troubled history and a personal story of Manuel Mathleu, the exhibition’s creator, is told through paintings and ceramics, many of which depict violence and tumult.
At the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, industrial history is the subject of a huge exhibition, as part of the Forum Series. The exhibition, a collaboration with Maria Watt and The Poetry Collection utilizes glass, steel and blankets as the materials of her creations
In this tumultuous time of political, racial and ethnic polarization and violence, college protests have become a real campus issue. In the spirit of encouraging calm and empathetic behavior, ten college museums are collaborating on one simple activity voting. Sculptures at the University of Oregon in Eugene provide a deep dive into the false depiction of society in a Norman Rockwell painting.
Mental illness s the subject of a new exhibition at the Mississippi of Art through a display of “What Became of Dr. Smith, a 122-foot long painting of Noal Saterstrom exploring is great-grandfather’s 40-year travails in the Mississippi State Insane Hospital. Among other things, he explores his own battles with depression and depersonalization.
This fresh and sometimes disturbing new museum content and form expand human understanding and connection through art, in a time when the world is anything but peaceful. Perhaps this should be the mission of all museums, in hopes that someday soon, it will no longer be so desperately needed.
As I wrote these words, I discovered that these types of new and thoughtful attractions have always formed the basis of my practice. Our body of work includes museums of motion pictures, television arts and sciences, Native American stories, Negro League Baseball, young female empowerment and carousels, to name just a few. I just never thought about it in that way. JB Research Company has always worked on projects for the 90%!
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Posted onFebruary 8, 2024|Comments Off on 10 Steps to Avoid Chapter 7 and 11
How do you fix the post-Covid world? How do you make people happy and delighted after four years of unprecedented sickness, cultural shifts, economic uncertainties, isolation, and loss of control? The majority of our engagements these days ask for the roadmap to successful projects, those that will fix or avoid Chapter 7 and 11.
A whole long while ago, I wrote an article with my mentor, Buzz Price, about the many failures of certain themed restaurants and attractions. I recently looked it over and was very surprised to see that it still has relevance for development of new attractions today, post Covid., Thus, I thought I would refresh our memories because these are still very true. Here are 10 ways to avoid bankruptcy when planning a new retail, dining, entertainment or cultural attraction.
When planning, balance revenue generation in the major categories: attractions, food service and merchandise.
Spend time computing capacity. Indoor attractions are hard to justify because of constrained capacity.
Attractions are driven by opportune locations, preferably in the path of major attendance generators. Stadium crowds at sporting events may not provide the required flow because of game-day surges.
High front-end R&D costs incurred in anticipation of a fast rollout are a plague.
Study the market and understand the nuances of its preferences. Pick your niches carefully and stick to them throughout planning and operation. Don’t try to change consumer behavior. The devil is in the details.
Keeps your eyes wide open and try to be objective about your passion project. You may think you have invented the next internet, but your market may not. On the other hand, be enthusiastic about the project and its greatest cheerleader. Keep a balance between your passion and market-driven objectivity.
Narrowly concepted attractions won’t find a broad-based market. Along those lines, clear and concise branding is key. Make sure your brand message is clear to your customer.
Assure that you have a critical mass of attractions to generate visitor interest for the required length of stay.
Use realistic assumptions when looking to the future. Respect comparative and competitive performance. If you do better than projected, you can fix the problem (in most, but not all cases).
The attraction must start up fully formed. Phase I needs to be a complete show. Undercapitalized projects have a high failure rate. Create realistic models for development cost, revenue and expense.
All in all, whether pre-COVID or Post-COVID, whether decades ago or today, the rules still apply. Please tell us about your new projects, what new rules you’ve discovered and how you’re doing in the post-Covid environment.
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Posted onAugust 4, 2023|Comments Off on When, Where and How We Are Normalizing
The Pandemic began in March 2020, just two weeks after my fourth grandchild was born. I had just returned from New York for Fashion Week, a watershed moment in my life, something I’ve always wanted to do! That’s how I remember it. And now, almost 40 months later, how has our business changed? Is there anything normal about our entertainment and retail worlds?
Let’s talk about the movies, the one thing everyone has in common in terms of entertainment. Theater grosses are down 40% from 2019, as are ticket prices, adjusted for inflation. Our movie product is uninspired, with just a few extraordinary stories, and they all won Academy Awards. As a matter of fact, I got the closest I ever will to the Academy Awards this year, by attending a very glittery and glamorous party at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures:
In the latest Morning Consult report on what we feel comfortable doing, 77% of adults said they were OK now to go to the cinema. But the latest Fox News Poll said that 60% of U.S. adults felt that Covid had changed their lives forever. Wisdom says, “only time will tell”.
Have all retail sales converted to digital? Are shopping centers dead? In fact, the percent of retail done online increased from 10% to 15% during the pandemic and have normalized now at just below 15%.
So what about total retail sales? Well, in fact, these have also grown (net of car sale and gasoline sales)?
As you can see, retail sales in real dollars, not adjusted for inflation, grew 8.7% annually between 2019 and projected 2023, even during the pandemic years. But adjusted for inflation, real growth has been 4.1%, still somewhat remarkable given what we’ve been through. Of course, government subsidies help out quite a bit.
I am a data nerd. I get all warm and excited when the census is released every 10 years. I looked at retail sales for the past four years and some fascinating things jumped out. GAFO sales, which includes most things sold in shopping centers, declined by 3%, which is not adjusted for inflation. Furniture, fixtures and equipment went up for three years, then decline significantly, probably due to the fact that people were out again. Food and Beverage stores, which include alcohol, grew by 17%, even after people could get out in 2020. Clothing declined significantly, down by 30%. Did people start buying more alcohol instead of business clothes, or any clothes for that matter? Did we give more attention to making our homes our staycataion palaces?
It is a very interesting phenomenon that when we have an “Act of God” experience that depresses our economy, it normally takes at least 5 years to get back to zero. In the case of Covid, its anyone’s guess.
In summary, the news is mixed, some disappointing, some hopeful. I am an optimist. I think we’ll be back to where we started by 2025.
What’s your experience been? How’s your business faring? Write us and let us know how you have experienced the pandemic and what you see for the future.
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Posted onJuly 2, 2023|Comments Off on Losing My Paper Babies
Today I did something I have never done before, and I will never do again. I have been procrastinating doing this for a long time. It seemed odious and frightening to me, and if I didn’t do it, no one would notice, die, be hurt or be sad.
Nonetheless, I did it this morning.
I trashed my whole body of work, more than 30 years of consulting, contained in more than 375 reports, all done to the best of my ability and always with care, meticulous research and anxiety. These were my babies, birthed with an insecurity most don’t understand. No matter how good my previous study was or how much praise I was given, I always felt I was starting over with each new assignment. Yes, complete impostor syndrome! Never resolved…
My library of work was a literal library, sitting proudly on shelves in my office. Anyone who walked into my office could see the results of the past 30 years of my professional life. As time went on and the body of past work became more prolific, I needed to box up some and put them on shelves in the garage. But I always kept the most current ones, perhaps those from the past 36 months close to my chair and close to my heart. I could pluck one off the shelf any time I wanted!
About 10 years ago the magic of digitization happened and my prized body of work became an icon in a folder that when clicked, disclosed the craziness of technology. Presto, the fruit of my effort materialized on a screen. I could store them, send them to clients, keep them in a new kind of library…a digital library! Those that weren’t able to be digitized were painstakingly scanned by my fabulous assistant Erica who didn’t mind doing it. (It would have driven me mad!)
I was very scared that I would miss something, or that the cloud would burst, or that the internet would break! Especially knowing that the “cloud” is really a huge roomful of very heavy computers that could be taken out by the Russians any time they wanted (which didn’t help my anxiety). I liken it to a fire that, incidentally, could also have engulfed my paper reports and wiped out my entire body of work.
I asked my adult kids and I asked my assistant, “Do I need these anymore?” only to be answered with a resounding chorus of “No!” So it was decided. I had to throw out my babies! But first I needed to understand if all the reports had a corresponding PDF icon in my digitized library. Not so easy to do, since there were 375 reports to check and four versions of the library databases, three of them in excel and one a list of the digitized PDF reports. It took 4 weeks to do and involved Erica’s and Charley’s help.
That task completed, I decided again (with my husband’s help) which jobs were special enough to keep as “mementos,” which were my most important assignments, and which got developed into now beautiful, successful, thriving, operating projects. My adult babies! There were about fifteen of these, so we made a list and pulled the paper copies. But then I looked over my excel list and saw so many more that were memorable, and I expanded the list. I now have about fifty reports I want to keep in their physical format. I found most of them but had a few left to find.
Easy peasy, but not so fast…
This morning came. The handyman was coming at 11 to fix a few things and to haul off the boxes of reports I was taking to be shredded and donated to the dump. I furiously began looking through boxes to find the last few I had not found before. Yet as I was doing this, I could not believe what I discovered. My body of work, my 40 years in the business, is very impressive. It was the first step in the development of some pretty imaginative, ground-breaking, singular kind of entertainment, cultural and retail real estate developments. 80,000 hours of work, give or take, and I had something to show for the effort! (This of course harkens back to my fundamental insecurity, and my constant feeling that I’m only as good as my last job.)
When I first had kids, I had a sort of overall goal – that I raise children who would make the world a better place than when they emerged. But going through my reports today, and throwing out some of my paper babies, I discovered I too have made the world a better place… and I am damn proud of it!
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