HUNTLEY – Lisa Armour, Deputy Village Manager, introduced a resolution at the April 28 Village Board meeting, to approve a contract with The Retail Coach for “conducting a site assessment of the Village’s market trade area and profiling the customer’s buying habits, lifestyle characteristics and media habits.”
Armour continued, “the results of the assessment will be used to guide decisions and use of resources to grow the Village’s retail sector and to shape goals for the recruitment of new retail businesses.”
Kelly Cofer, Founder and CEO of The Retail Coach, was present at the meeting to make a presentation and to answer Board questions. Cofer began by saying “one thing that is important to our company is that we really strive for a balance between local businesses and national retail brands.”
He continued, “the last thing we want to do is to have a local business owner feel like we are trying to intrude on their business just bring in competition for them.”
“We are retail recruiters that work on your behalf. We go out and help identify retail and restaurants that would be a fit for your community,” Cofer added. “At the end of the day we’re going to give you a retail trade area that we have 110% confidence in, that we can sell to the retail community.”
Cofer explained, “We would have a conversation with vacant property owners to find out exactly what their plans are and try to assist them in putting the property into the hands of developers to execute a development or assist them in developing it themselves.”
“We’ll be paying close attention to that mix that coincides with and blends and melds well with your existing local businesses. We’re not trying to put anybody out of business,” he continued.
“This is really the key, what we do here, we want to look at your downtown and delineate the boundaries. You’ve got a really healthy downtown and you need to build on that.” Cofer stated, “Local business and national brands will co-exist and that will be in the back of our minds.
Cofer concluded, “Before we start any level of recruitment, it’s going to be approved by you.”
The Village Board unanimously approved The Retail Coach $47,000 one-year contract. Additional optional years were quoted at $30,000 each.
