Tesco, one of the UK’s largest retailers and most acquisitive retailers, met its goal of finding suitable convenience store sites, with the benefit of GCW’s analytical approach to retail acquisitions.
Tesco tasked GCW with increasing their representation within the City of London for their Express convenience store model. In order to rise to this challenge GCW agreed to master plan the City to explain the retailing environment from this retailer’s specific perspective.
· The master planning exercise included:
· examining existing Tesco locations
· store size
· market penetration
· potential cannibalisation
Identifying core competitor’s sites & extent of market share and established shopping patterns and the unique qualities of City of London:
· time poor & cash rich shoppers
· relatively poor comparison shopping offer
· uniquely short trading hours per week
· Plotting commuter routes from offices to transport hubs
Having developed an understanding of the consumers shopping habits and developed a short list of locations that matched Tesco’s criteria GCW embarked on a more site specific search. This research ranged from desktop searching to direct meetings with landlords and city agents and direct approaches to existing occupiers to uncover suitable opportunities.
The selection criteria took account of store size, location, ease of servicing and rental parameters discussed with Tesco. These were then mapped and ranked according to their priority and how they matched the criteria previously established.
GCW’s comprehensive approach to site searching exceeded Tesco’s initial expectations. As a direct result of this exercise GCW subsequently successfully negotiated the acquisition of three sites for Tesco Express. Further opportunities are under investigation or negotiation.
The success of the City project has resulted in Tesco instructing GCW to repeat the exercise in other locations across the South East.