One of the signs your economy is shifting might be the presence of bigger stores. Outdoor megastore Cabela's announced today it would build an 81,000 square foot store in Avon, expecting to employ 225 people.
Ideastream’s Tony Ganzer spoke with Cabela's public relations manager Joe Arterburn about what prompted the decision; followed by a chat with retail analyst Bob Antall.
ARTERBURN: “We’ve been looking in the Cleveland-area for a long time. We know from our catalogue and internet sales, and customer comments, that we have thousands of loyal customers in that area; a lot of outdoor-oriented kind of people. We’re just thrilled to be on the west side of Cleveland. We know we have a strong following of our core-customers in that area.”
GANZER: “There’s been a lot of talk around Cleveland of kind of a resurgence, that the city is coming back. Did that play any part in your guys’ decision to say ‘hey, maybe Cleveland is on the upswing again’?”
ARTERBURN: “Yeah, I think that’s definitely something. We’ve really had a really good feeling about the Avon area, and the people we’ve met with. There is a lot of excitement there, a progressive and welcoming attitude. The people we’ve met and worked with are as excited about us coming there as we are. I think it’s safe to say that it’s going to be a heck of an area, a growing area, and we’re just really looking forward to it.”
We decided to pick up on that last point, and look deeper into what the appearance of a bigger store, like Cabela's or furniture giant Ikea, might say about where our region is economically.
For that, I spoke with Bob Antall, the managing partner of Shaker Heights-based retail consulting firm Consumer Centric Consulting.
ANTALL: “They look at a market like Cleveland, and they see little competition, and they see enough people who buy the products that they sell, then they’ll move into a market. My guess is they’ve saturated a lot of the larger markets, and now they’re looking for a bit smaller. Now with Cabela’s, they’ve got a huge trading area. Typically their customers go for 100 miles or more to visit a Cabela’s store, so their looking not only at Cleveland, but they’re looking at Youngstown, Akron/Canton, Mansfield, Toledo, all being potential customers.”
GANZER: “There’s a lot of talk now of a resurgence of Cleveland, especially looking at where the area’s been in the past. We have come a long way, though times are still tough. Do you think that announcements like Cabela’s contribute to that at all, or do you think this has more to do with other markets, instead of what’s going on here?”
ANTALL: “I don’t think that they look at the resurgence of Cleveland or whatever. I think they look at purely by ‘how much product can I sell in that trading area?’ And they look at this market and they say ‘it looks like we can put a store here, and meet our sales objectives based on the current population.’”
GANZER: “Do you think this could be a trend? Do you think that if one moves in and sees that there’s potential to move more product that other companies might do the same, or look a little closer at where Cleveland is as a market?”
ANTALL: “Yeah, I think so. Somebody like Ikea, again, has a huge trading area, and customers will drive 60-100 miles to come there. So if they look at this as the right demographics, and the right amount of money that they’re looking for they project will be spent there, they will move in to that marketplace for sure.”
GANZER: “Anything else you think people should keep in mind when people hear announcements of a Cabela’s or something moving in?”
ANTALL: “You know, given the fact that Cleveland is growing, but not growing rapidly, when a big store comes in they are going to take a share of existing retail sales from other people. So you can expect, like Home Depot or a big Wal-Mart comes in, they’re taking business away from someone else. So you can expect some stores to close when that happens. It’s just inevitable, because of the single-digit kind of growth going on in the Cleveland-area. ”
