Retail Retold

Why student spending, college sports, and year-round demand are putting university markets on investors’ radar. Are college towns one of the most overlooked opportunities? Traditional demographics might suggest limited demand, but what's happening on the ground tells a different story. Chris Ressa and Karly Iacono explore why university-driven markets deserve a closer look and how student spending...

A decade of meetings that went nowhere. A department store deal that nearly unraveled. And a conversation that helped change an entire city. You can't make this stuff up. Vince Corno , Senior Vice President of Real Estate at DICK'S Sporting Goods, has spent nearly 35 years making retail real estate deals. And he's got some incredible stories. He joins Chris Ressa on Retail Retold to share what rea...

Is that the sweet smell of premium chocolate in the Windy City air? Premium chocolate is growing faster than the broader confectionery category. Hotel Chocolat wants a bigger piece of that growth in the U.S. Backed by Mars and already established with roughly 170 stores in the UK, Hotel Chocolat is building out its American footprint with a retail strategy centered on more than what’s inside the b...

What does it take to scale kids entertainment nationwide? Family entertainment has become a major part of the retail real estate conversation. But as the category gets more crowded, the concepts that grow will need more than a good idea. Suat Gokmen , co-founder and part owner of FunBox , joins Chris Ressa to talk about the growth of the kids entertainment brand and what it takes to scale a concep...

The People Are the Plot What does it take to make a retail real estate deal work? Ask Chris Ressa, and he’ll tell you it starts with people. In this episode, University of Alabama student Asa Moran, host of CRE Simplified , interviews Chris about the lessons he has learned across his career. Digging into the fundamentals of the business, Chris offers lessons for anyone working in commercial real e...

Persistence, scarce retail space and the fundamentals behind the right deal. This Retail Retold replay brings us back to a conversation with Kevin Nassimi , Vice President of Real Estate at Nassimi Realty, about a question that still matters: Does America actually have enough physical retail space? For years, the industry talked about the U.S. being over-stored. Chris Ressa and Kevin challenged th...

The case for more retail investment is getting harder to deny. Retail real estate has spent years proving its strength. Vacancy is tight, rents are growing and recent performance has outpaced other major commercial real estate asset classes. Yet retail still accounts for just 13% of institutional real estate holdings. So why hasn’t capital caught up? CBRE’s Karly Iacono and Chris Ressa look at the...

Prime retail space is hard to find. How does solidcore keep growing? Solidcore is scaling fast. The boutique fitness brand will have approximately 190 locations open by the end of the month, up from about 85 when Josh Rainey joined the company. It expects to reach roughly 240 locations by the end of next year. The demand is there. The real estate is the harder part. Josh, senior director of real e...

How do technology and trust create safer shopping centers? Security is easy to notice after something goes wrong. The harder question is whether owners and operators are doing enough before that moment arrives. Chris Ressa talks with Mark Bradshaw, vice president of property management at DLC, and Paul Ganz, vice president of business market development at LiveView Technologies, about how retail p...

The Dark Horse of Consumer Spending Retail is obsessed with the next consumer. What does Gen Z want? How will younger shoppers change stores? Which brands, experiences, and trends will win their attention? But while everyone looks ahead, retail may be overlooking one of the most powerful consumers in the market right now. Gen X accounted for $15.2 trillion in global consumer spending in 2025 - tha...

Retailers want to grow. The question is what they’ll pay for the right space. Retailers want more stores. Vacancy remains historically low. And meaningful new retail development is still years away. So what does that mean for the next five years of retail real estate? What are the forces today that are driving the future? At the center of the August What’s in Store conversation between CBRE’s Karl...

In a World Using Less Cash, Banks Keep Opening Branches! Why? Bank branches are everywhere, even as more of our banking happens online. You can deposit a check from your phone, transfer money in seconds, and apply for a loan without ever walking into a bank. Yet some of the country’s largest banks and credit unions continue investing heavily in physical locations. So what makes the bank branch so...

What if one real estate decision changed the trajectory of an entire company? Back in 2021, the retail industry was navigating supply chain disruptions, soaring construction costs, and an uncertain recovery. Today, this conversation with Five Below Vice President of Real Estate Zach Minteer feels less like a snapshot in time and more like a masterclass in building a resilient retail business. This...

The consumer behaviors behind today's strongest retail trends and what they mean for retailers, landlords, and shopping centers. Retail traffic is telling a very different story than most headlines suggest. According to Ethan Chernofsky , Chief Marketing Officer at Placer.ai , consumers aren't abandoning stores. They're redefining how they use them. One of the biggest shifts is happening inside ev...

The questions everyone new to retail real estate needs to ask. Sometimes the best conversations start with someone willing to ask questions. That's exactly what happened when Chris Ressa handed the microphone to DLC Marketing Coordinator Jordyn Levine. Retail Retold usually features founders, CEOs, and industry leaders. This time, the conversation turned inward. Drawing on conversations with Chris...

Commercial real estate has entered a new era where execution, partnership, and long-term thinking have become the industry's greatest competitive advantages. In commercial real estate, everyone talks about capital. Not enough people talk about partnership. That's what makes the relationship between DLC and Temerity Strategic Partners different. Recorded from DLC's new media studio in Elmsford, New...

Is EV charging becoming an essential retail amenity? Electric vehicles have become impossible to ignore, but one of the biggest conversations isn't happening inside the car. It's happening in the parking lot. As EV adoption continues to grow, retail real estate is becoming an increasingly important part of the charging network. Chris Ressa sits down with Scott Levitan , Executive Vice President of...

The market has evolved. The questions are just as relevant. A Retail Retold Replay looking back at retail in 2024. We're throwing it back to ICSC 2024 with James Cook , Americas Director of Retail Research at JLL and host of the Where We Buy podcast. From the DLC booth in Las Vegas, James and Chris Ressa shared a quick and impactful conversation on the trends shaping retail real estate, from the c...

Just how niche is the secondhand retail market? Secondhand retail is one of the fastest-growing forces in retail, with the market expected to approach $80 billion by 2030. According to America's Thrift CEO Chris Homewood, that scale would make the category larger than the GDP of more than 130 countries. But the story is bigger than growth. As consumers spend more of their lives in digital environm...

How Tahini's is Winning the Race for Growth For growing brands, expansion is the goal. The real question is how you get there. At a time when restaurant concepts are racing to sign development deals, enter major markets, and announce aggressive expansion plans, Tahini's is taking a different approach. The Mediterranean fast-casual brand is growing quickly across North America, but the strategy beh...

What happens when experience becomes perspective? Every year, thousands of retail real estate professionals descend on Las Vegas looking for answers. Where are rents headed? Who's expanding? What's the next opportunity? Which relationships will create the next great deal? But before the meetings begin and before the convention floor opens, there's a more important question worth asking: What actua...

The predictions that looked a lot more like reality on the show floor. Everyone arrives at ICSC with predictions. The real question is which ones survive contact with 25,000 people on the show floor. Chris Ressa and CBRE's Karly Iacono weren't just attending ICSC Las Vegas. They were in the middle of it. Between meetings, deal discussions, and serving as panelists at the inaugural ICSC+PROPTech ev...

The retail real estate industry is entering ICSC Las Vegas with momentum, confidence, and a fundamentally different supply-demand dynamic. Recorded live from the SiriusXM Studios at Wynn Las Vegas ahead of ICSC Las Vegas 2026, this special episode of Retail Retold brings together two of the industry’s most influential voices: Tom McGee, President and CEO of ICSC, and Adam Ifshin, Founder and CEO o...

From the SiriusXM Studio at Wynn: Retail’s Next Big Move Broadcast live from the SiriusXM Studios at the Wynn Las Vegas and kicking off ICSC Las Vegas, Retail Retold stepped onto one of the biggest stages in the industry for a special conversation between Chris Ressa and DLC Founder and CEO Adam Ifshin . As Adam put it during the recording: “What is more fitting for Retail Retold to be the pregame...

Retail leasing could be entering a completely different era of speed. Anyone who has worked on retail leases knows the process can feel endless. Versions flying back and forth. Redlines buried in email chains. Hours spent drafting language that’s been negotiated a hundred times before. And somehow, despite all the technology in the world, a huge part of the leasing process still feels manual. Davi...