How Geofencing Empowers Traditional Retailers in a Digital-First World

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By Franco Faraudo · November 25, 2024

Greetings,

This week, Propmodo Technology is diving into retail real estate technology.

As the holiday shopping season starts, retailers are getting ready for their largest sales volumes of the year. While many of this year’s gifts will be purchased online, physical retail sales have been consistently growing since the pandemic. In a recent Propmodo Live webinar, Placer.ai’s head of real estate shared some encouraging numbers about the continued growth of in-store visits for the country’s biggest retailers.

There are a number of reasons for the preference for in-store purchases. Some items are obviously difficult to buy online but retailers and retail landlords deserve some credit for the innovative new strategies they have used to make shopping centers desirable destinations again. Some of the country’s most innovative malls have created experiences that can’t be replicated online including experiential stores, pop-up shops, and exclusive events.

As popular as e-commerce has become, there is a major threat to the current business model lurking in warehouses: returns. There have been talks that Amazon and other online retailers will start to charge for returns. Returns are so difficult for our current direct to consumer supply chains that many retailers are resorting to “no send” returns which let the consumer keep the defective product rather than sending it back to the retailer. UPS has even invested in a tech startup called Happy Returns to help build out the logistic company’s ability to deal with the huge amount of returns it deals with on a daily basis. If returns become a larger problem for online retailers it will make storefronts even more valuable as they will be important hubs for pick up and returns of purchases made online.

There are some promising signs that this holiday season will be a busy one for retailers. If consumers do much of their holiday shopping in-store, it will be another boost for retail real estate and the technology that supports it.

Here are some of the most important stories around retail real estate technology.

Let’s go!

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Bytes

Positive thinking
Architects and engineers are looking past “net zero” and have started to design buildings that are “climate positive,” meaning they generate more energy than they consume and sequester more carbon than they produce.

Organic growth
Google has unveiled the design of its first mass timber office building that will be built in Sunnyvale, California. The company claims that the buildings wooden structure will produce 96 percent less carbon than a traditional one made of steel and concrete.

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Propmodo Technology is edited by Franco Faraudo with contributions from readers like you and the Propmodo team.

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