I sometimes think of ourselves as digital landlords. Our clients rent their retail 'property' from us and pay a monthly rent. We are responsible for keeping the building up-to-date, the roof patched, and the sidewalk clean.  This real estate metaphor came to mind again recently when The Wall St. Journal shared how interior designers spruce up rentals and thereby rent them for more.

Article excerpt:
"[The upgraded rental property] Perch came online in December 2023, for a nightly rate of $1,200 to $2,400. In 2024, it was occupied 208 nights, 56% of the time, and generated $300,000 in revenue, says Spencer, owner of a property-management company, Travlr Vacation Homes. Without professional styling, he estimates, it would have rented for at most $70,000 a year. He paid Oblen $60,000."

Summary: By enlisting a professional, the property increased its revenue from $70k to $300k. I believe a store could say the same about hiring us: we make them more money when we handle their online property. For example, a Texas retail client generates nearly $2m online with our service. Without us, it would still have an online store, but I believe it would generate just $750k.  The indie merchant receives a gross benefit of $1.25m and pays us just $75k/year.    If we were truly real estate advisors, we'd be hired by every landlord in the country.  Every landlord wants $1.25m gross on a $75k outlay.

Article excerpt:
"Since 2023, [a newly renovated property] is booked for an average of 200 nights a year, up from 75 nights before the redesign, for $375 a night, up from $200 before, and well above the average of $255 for three-bedroom rentals in Weatherford in the 12 months through February, based on AirDNA data."

How real estate compares to our e-commerce service: 

• Landlords measure a tenant's revenue per month. We do, too.  
• Landlords measure the anticipated revenue of making a investment vs. not. We make similar decisions when deciding what to build and invest in our platform. Like the interior designers in the article, we're adding upgrades that generate more revenue for our clients. While they promise kids slides, pickleball courts, and outdoor movie screens, we give our clients: wedding registry checklists, the Wedding Gift Center, and registry accounting software.
• A hospitality landlord measures how many nights a property is rented (aka used).  We measure how much a website is used: aka, how many sales are made each day, and how many registries are created.  We bring a retailer so much in sales that they should display a big neon "No Vacancy" sign on their site.
• While an interior designer increases the nightly rental rates, we increase a store's number of registries, the average sales per registry, and overall registry sales. We help them sell products are accurate, higher prices.  If their store were a hotel, we'd be giving them a full hotel--with a higher nightly rate.
• We're like landlords, but we're also akin to 'property managers', and we're trying to get the most out of the property for the retailer. 

• Like a landlord, we want to increase rents because that increases our revenue. To do that, we have to keep making the neighborhood better. We do that by adding more Syncing Brands, new features, apps, and marketplaces. We also know it's a free market; we also seek ways to lower costs in order to lower 'rents' and make our services more appealing to prospective 'renters.'

   

We share customer success stories to help tell the story of how we increase sales.  Mimicking the WSJ's writing style, I trust we can share an update like this:

In the last two years, an indie store had 1,000 wedding registries a year, up from 500 registries before the switch to Shop Local, generating $3,200 in sales per registry, up from $1,000 before, and well above the average of $400 for wedding registries.

To our team, thank you for making our digital buildings, mall, and neighborhood better.  This produces happier renters, increases renter demand, and increases revenue. Of course, a retailer can not use us, but they'll have a ‘property’ that sits empty more--and when it is ‘rented,’ it will rent for less. 

We can predict this for them:
In the next year, your store will have 300 wedding registries a year, up from 100 registries without Shop Local, generating $3,200 in sales per registry, up from $1,000 without.
 

Read the full WSJ article:
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/luxury-short-term-rentals-005cb146?st=nZ7h7w&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
 

See our 2019 post that compares a store to a website:
https://bridge.myshoplocal.com/news.cfm/17939/

(And here is our original 2017 on this same topic: https://bridge.myshoplocal.com/news.cfm/9695/)