LAKEPORT— The Retail Coach, which brands itself as a national retail consulting, market research and development firm that delivers high-impact recruitment and development strategies to local governments, chambers of commerce and economic development organizations, presented updates about local commercial activities, trends and potential franchise opportunities in Lakeport through a number of sparsely attended workshops at City Hall, also live streamed through Zoom this week.
The Project Director at The Retail Coach, Austin Farmer, said he has been working with the city since 2018 to identify opportunities for retail growth and to expand the retail market in Lakeport in two ways: going out and trying to bring in new businesses, recruiting national retailers and restaurants to come into the community; and expanding and helping existing business owners to find new opportunities and to have access to the same data national retailers do.
As covered by this newspaper previously, the Retail Coach firm was paid $30,000 at the conclusion of its first year primarily to drum up interest in the area by courting retailers to plug in some of the vacancies in the retail area in the wake of Kmart’s departure and given other regional vacancies. The contract was extended earlier this year for another $25,000. Farmer said coming out of COVID, the firm was looking how to grow downtown specifically.
“We’re a retail consulting, market research and development firm. We’ve worked all over the country with over 650 cities throughout the U.S. in more than 40 states. In the past five years, we have been able to recruit over five million square feet of retail to those clients, cities and communities and, ultimately, to the benefit of the community, by generating sales tax”, he said. “Through that work, we’ve been able to generate $600 million in additional sales tax.”
The out of state business consultant said leveraging zip code data is highly encouraged for specific business owners, entrepreneurs and restaurants. “There are opportunities for advertising and marketing, especially with social media. In today’s world, you can use Facebook, YouTube and Twitter ads, actually targeting specific zip codes. You have to have that integration of technology; a website; social media; a Google listing all of those things… Consumers expect that now,” said Farmer, who added he was surprised at the amount of “people that aren’t from Lakeport area, where they don’t live in, doing business in the city.”
Through the use of geofencing technology, using cell phone data from consumers, the consultant has been able to determine, among other findings, where downtown visitors are coming from pinpointed by zip code. Perhaps not surprisingly, the highest number of visitors hail from Kelseyville, Lakeport and Clearlake, but visitors were also determined to be coming in from Ukiah and other nearby regions in higher levels than anticipated.
Some of the sectors identified as opportunities for projected retail demand growth over the next five years presented at the workshops included electronic and appliance stores, (almost 3 percent annual growth) health and personal care stores including pharmacies, (2.92 percent) cosmetics and beauty supply stores (3.64 percent) and sporting goods (over 4 percent).
Farmer shared anecdotes such as his work in a community in Iowa: “they lost their Target, which ended up moving out of town. The local pharmacist’s daughter was frustrated because that’s where she bought all of her cosmetic stuff, couldn’t find anywhere and didn’t want to buy it online. She actually went and ordered wholesale a lot of the items that she could get from Target and she started offering those in her store, advertising it. Within three to four months, they were doing more cosmetic sales than some of the general pharmacy items. They’ve expanded that business. They bought the store next door, where they have the cosmetics in there.”
Lakeport has a business loan program that focuses on job creation or job retention. The dollar amounts vary between $35,000 up to $140,000. The interest rates can go down to 1%. It is an extended term loan, meant to fill a financial gap. The program is very flexible. It is money that originates with Housing and Urban Development (HUD), federal funds that pass through the state of California. The city has to apply for it for the purpose of retaining and creating jobs.
Andy Lucas, with Community Development Services, an economic development firm based in Kelseyville, said the city has recently submitted an application to the state for half a million dollars in business loan funds.
Questions on the on the business loan program can be answered by calling 707-279-1540.
