Topics: AI, retail real estate

In this episode of Retail Retold, Chris Ressa welcomes Anjee Solanki, the head of U.S. retail for Collier’s, to jump into the current state and future of retail real estate.

Anjee provides insights on the recent leasing activities, the challenges faced by retailers in store openings, and the projections for year-end growth in the retail sector. Anjee and her team at Colliers recently published a report on AI in retail, covering how both retailers and landlords are adopting AI, the potential power infrastructure needs, and the impact on consumer experience. Tune in for an engaging conversation on the evolving landscape of retail real estate and the role of AI in shaping it.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:24 State of the Union on Retail Real Estate
01:58 Challenges in Retail Leasing and Occupancy
02:58 Discussion on Rent and Fixed Costs
08:22 AI in Retail: Insights and Impacts
09:53 Landlord and Retailer Perspectives on AI
15:36 Consumer Adoption and Future of AI
24:09 Final Thoughts and Future Outlook
38:45 Conclusion and Farewell

About Retail Retold:

The Retail Retold Podcast highlights community retailer stories from across the country and gives a behind-the-scenes perspective from business leaders in both retail and real estate industries. The show’s episodes contain valuable insights that help solve the needs of entrepreneurs and real estate pros. Join host Chris Ressa and new guests weekly for amazing insights and thought-provoking stories.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Chris Ressa: Welcome to Retail Retold, everyone. Today, I’m joined by Anjee Solanki. Anjee is the head of U. S. retail for Collier’s. I’m excited for her to be here. Welcome to the show, Anjee.

[00:00:17] Anjee Solanski: Thanks for having me, Chris. I’m really excited to be here and talking about retail.

[00:00:22] Chris Ressa: Yes. Anjeeie, why don’t you give your, what I’ll call a state of the union on retail real estate. What’s your perspective, what’s going on at a high level, and then we’ll get into the report that you guys just put out on AI in retail.

[00:00:43] Anjee Solanski: 100%. Gosh, when we look at retail from a leasing perspective, we’ve seen significant activity over the last several years. Will we continue to see that in 2025? I think we’re going to see a slight slowdown. from, predominantly because just lack of supply. So construction hasn’t really picked up.

Store expansion is definitely on a high, but we’re going to see much more flexibility from retailers just to find space and fit within that space configuration. So will they, Expand and or downsize. Yes. The next thing I would say that we are on a 10 year high as it relates to leasing occupancy. So I think we’ve had the highest occupancy in our Class A and Class B centers across the US, which is great to see.

Now my one thing that keeps me up at night, I’ll tell you really quickly here, Chris, is I want to make sure our retailers are healthy. I know our landlords are just excited and, enjoying this really exciting moment where, they can push the rents a little bit more, but we do need a healthy balance between rent and occupancy costs based on sales. So keep a look out on that.

We’re monitoring that right now. Challenges to open. We talked a little bit about this, Chris, it’s taking a lot longer for retailers to, open once a lease is signed because of all of the barriers as it relates to permitting construction finding great contractors Etc, etc But it isn’t slowing down the retailers by any means.

They just are really looking at how they’re Signing leases and when their openings occur and then I think in terms of just overall efficiencies We’re going to continue to see you know Improvement and overall operational efficiencies. And I think the ops groups are going to be heavily involved with store expansion and contractions going forward.

And then lastly, I’m going to just, say year end forecast for 2024 year over year growth in the retail sector. I think we’re going to end the year around 3. 3%.

[00:02:55] Chris Ressa: Fantastic. Very good update. I liked it. I’m going to push on one point you made since you, you highlighted the thing that keeps you up at night is the rent.

Let’s talk about that for a couple minutes. Okay. So my take of it is obviously all, fixed expenses, right? I think most businesses are mindful of. Okay. But we had a, you said landlords are happy and and enjoying the moment, but we had a significant period of time where I would tell you the net effective rent was pretty flat.

In America, and so when you think about the for retail, the net effective rent today is still challenging and yes landlords are getting some growth, but it is after a period where the net effective rent. Is has been flat for a long time, and I would say the challenge, it’s easy to point to occupancy, but the other there are other fixed costs that have risen at a much greater pace over a period of, let’s call it 15 years.

Let’s not focus on the last. Two years, much higher than rent, especially when you look at the net effective rent.

[00:04:35] Anjee Solanski: Fair point. No, I would agree with you when you look at it from a, from a growth perspective. And yes, you’re 100 percent right. And when you look at, total gross rent, insurance costs have gone up.

Security costs have gone up. Utility costs have gone up considerably, but I’m also looking at it from a point of view of, when you start to look at how landlords are now remerchandising repositioning their assets, which I think every landlord should do on a, depending on the landlord and the project and the location on a, every 3 to 5 year cycle, If landlords are not paying attention to that, and are trying to bump up rents that are above market, they have to just be mindful of how does it all fit into the overall process.

So I’m just looking at it from both sides, and I just think we need to monitor.

[00:05:28] Chris Ressa: Sure, yeah, the area I think that I get stuck on when I’m saying the net effective is. If average rent, and I’ll just use round numbers, in 2010 was 10, just for round numbers, and the average cost to install a tenant at that time for a landlord, let’s call it, that’s landlord work, TI, commissions, all that stuff, was 50.

If rent moved 10 percent and rent moves to 11, but the cost to install a tenant moves To 150. Now it’s I actually I’m getting less rent than net effective than I was previously. And that’s the piece that I think is the balance, right? Because the rent might be going up and, there were times during that time from 2010 to 2000, 19, that rent went up, but by and large, on a net effective basis, You know, there hasn’t been enough growth in retail real estate.

And now, yes, you are definitely seeing landlords trying to. Maximize the opportunity. No doubt.

[00:06:49] Anjee Solanski: I would agree. And it’s interesting, right? Because when you start to look at a remerchandising plan for an asset and you look at what is, what are those costs from a landlord perspective for T.

I. and landlord work, etcetera, of course, you’re going to see that, that the higher numbers in F and B. And some of your big box tenant requirements, et cetera. And it goes back to, okay, so how do you take that pool of capital and start to allocate it from a merchandising perspective that still gives you a very robust merchandising plan for your customer or the community at whole.

And I think that’s, to me, that’s the. Those are the pieces to the puzzle that we’re all, working through so we can keep our assets or those properties positioned top of mind for that consumer because that consumer is spending dollars, right? Both brick and mortar predominantly, as we know, but also online still.

And they have like you and at least I know I do. I shop multiple centers from a grocery perspective. I try to hit, Costco, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s in, when I’m out. Doing my grocery shopping all at once. So I think it’s just, how do you retain the consumer and that dollar to help grow the footfall and the spend?

[00:08:11] Chris Ressa: Totally. Okay. Like I said before, those were just, I was giving an example. Those weren’t any specific market numbers. I was just giving a quick math example. And I want to take us now to the. the heart of today’s episode in your report. So obviously AI is a hot button for all industries, not just retail, not just real estate, not just retail real estate.

This is a hot button in every industry. You don’t have to go very far. To, hear some pundit talk about AI. But yours is about some of the essential insights specifically for retailers, landlords and consumers. So why don’t you take us through what your findings were? What this is about?

And go from there.

[00:09:04] Anjee Solanski: Yeah, a hundred percent for first off. Thank you so much, Chris, for acknowledging the report. We’re very excited for this fall report. And AI and retail is it’s interesting. It’s in the forefront. We are in our early days, but I think we need to discuss this because.

There’s a couple things. I think the adoption from a retailer perspective is very strong, and the reason being is because of operational efficiencies. As I mentioned, margins are getting, hit hard on from a labor perspective, et cetera, et cetera supply chain and so forth. So retailers are really embracing this.

The AI component for, a lot of the administrative, a lot of the kind of, daily business needs. So my, when we were starting to develop this, our national team, in terms of hold on a second. If retailers are adopting this at a very fast pace, and it’s supporting the consumer journey and their spend journey and making them feel really happy and more loyal to that retailer, how does this feed into the landlord side?

So I immediately said, team, we need to research how is the landlord going to. Start to deploy AI within their landscape. And what I found really interesting from this Chris is a couple of things. Number one, landlords are talking about it, but they’re talking about it predominantly from a property management perspective.

So how can it help property management be more efficient? So the actual property managers can do more. tenant outreach more surveys with their tenants work closely with the consumers, do more marketing events et cetera. And I found that to be, I think that’s definitely the easy place to go.

And I think it’s an important place and critical place for AI and landlords. The other thing I started asking landlords was, hold on, and I’m curious for, to get your perspective on this, Chris, is, Are you looking at, is there an MEP infrastructure requirement if we start deploying AI within spaces or retailers have a need to deploy AI within their premises?

Is that going to require more electrical, more mechanical?

[00:11:20] Chris Ressa: I’m going to, I’m going to go, I’m going to answer that in a second. I’m going to go back to the first piece, which is, you make a good point on like how landlords are thinking about it. I would say I would bucket it as landlords are thinking about it primarily from what workflows and data, whereas like retailers and your report here, you’re like showing like robots and I don’t hear anything in the commercial real estate space where like landlords are thinking for their business robots. So that says a couple things to me. Like it, it says to me, like landlords are thinking about it from data efficiency and, retailers are seemingly a little bit ahead.

They’re thinking about it, like from an actual, like. Doing some of the work for doing some of the work at a much greater scale than maybe the landlord’s at it. So that’s the first piece. Is that a fair assessment? And that’s just my anecdotal. I didn’t do this empirical research that you did, but that’s my anecdotal.

[00:12:33] Anjee Solanski: No, a hundred percent. Look, retailers are using AI for customer service, some backend operations, like you said. Data. I do like your perspective as it relates to data and workflow from a landlord perspective. I think I’ve seen from a robot perspective, I’ve only seen one landlord, one or two landlords use robots as security within their open air centers, which I was like, okay, that’s interesting.

I don’t know if it was at the end of the day, I have no idea if it was actually. Useful or functional or it worked.

[00:13:09] Chris Ressa: Yeah, I don’t know. That’s interesting.

[00:13:12] Anjee Solanski: But yeah, the landlord perspective on AI is, it’s definitely much more measured and measured approach because it’s costly. At the moment,

[00:13:23] Chris Ressa: right? And to your point on electric, I think there’s always unintended consequences from the, these new initiatives the having greater needs for electric is a challenge because it’s already hard to get more capacity to any property from in a lot of places.

So I hadn’t considered it. But I guess it would depend and I’m not sure of, like, how much power is needed for some of these things, but so I’m not sure. Anjee, to answer your question, quite candidly, I’m not an expert enough to know what is the power requirement to use AI I At scale at a property.

But, yeah I would think that if you had to if you were using it at the scale that like some of these retailers are then potentially I just I don’t know how much power is required to, if you have. Clearly, if you’ve got robots trolling the entire parking lot, you might need, I imagine they need more power than some other things that are happening at a property.

[00:14:37] Anjee Solanski: Yeah. It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of, what occurs in the next 24 to 36 months as it relates to AI. Like I said, I think we’re still in our very early days from a landlord perspective, but something to talk about because, it’s going to happen and what it does, do we have enough power to support it? I can’t tell you the number of conversations I’m having with various, groups across the U S going back to that earlier point of challenges of store openings where we have to upgrade transformers. We’re working with a retailer right now and they have a very high MEP electrical requirement and it’s killing deals and it’s this is crazy. Like, how do we need to get, we need to get ahead of this, whether it’s AI or other

[00:15:23] Chris Ressa: so for sure. So that’s the high level. That was some of the, you gave a little difference between the retailer and landlord. What else? As you guys dug into, did you find,

[00:15:36] Anjee Solanski: I think, from a report perspective, it’s going to be interesting to see how how the consumer is going to start to adopt as it relates to the AI component, their confidence seems to be, I would say, optimistic. The unsure is pretty small. Optimistics around 27%, which is pretty good. Pessimistic. I think, it’s because of just lack of understanding or education around it, but look, we’re already using it. We use it in our conversation with all these chatbots. It’s annoying.

In my opinion, it’s annoying. So I think the consumer is where we’re going to have to heavily lean into to get higher adoption. Going forward.

[00:16:17] Chris Ressa: Yeah. The, you know what? I found a couple of things interesting. The. If you go in yours, like the, the retailers seemingly based on your report are looking to, and, I called it like do things, but the way the report says is to reduce repetitive laborious tasks.

That’s something that. That’s talked about. Have you heard from any landlords who are talking about AI doing things that are laborious at the actual business level?

[00:16:54] Anjee Solanski: Yes, more so on the property management side, Chris, and so on. So those tasks that are repetitive and or laborious they are evaluating how they can take some of that pressure off the property management teams.

I’ve also seen that being utilized within design and engineering. So from an architectural perspective, so more call it your kind of rendering. Not, your full CADs or your full architectural, but some of those tasks that can be done via the vis a vis an AI component are being done today.

I’ll give you an example. There’s a group we’re working with a retailer and they have a mandate to do. Over 300 stores, if not more per year, and that puts a lot of pressure on the construction team. What we did is we set them up with a group where a robot actually goes into the space will take pictures of the full space will send that over and they’ll just do a preliminary call it L.

O. D. of that space for their construction team at a very small cost. It does a couple things. Our brokers don’t have to go take photos. They can just coordinate that directly with the third party. And so it’s between the landlords management group and this third party and it gets done and it’s all digitally sent and the landlord gets to keep a copy.

So it’s a win for all of us. And if we can do that in advance of, where landlords are doing it, utilizing this robotic kind of call it. Okay. Space outline and photos, etcetera of their vacancies. Look how much time we’re saving right in that leasing conversation.

[00:18:36] Chris Ressa: Can I guess on the what you’re using?

Please. Is it Matterport? It’s a

[00:18:42] Anjee Solanski: part of Matterport. It’s not Matterport. I’ll give you the name right now. Let’s see here. It is. Is this talking to my group? It’s called Robotic Imaging Inc.

Great plug for them.

[00:18:56] Chris Ressa: For sure. Robotic Imaging Inc. And you said it’s a part of Matterport?

[00:19:02] Anjee Solanski: It’s not a part of Matterport. It’s

[00:19:04] Chris Ressa: not.

[00:19:04] Anjee Solanski: Correct.

[00:19:05] Chris Ressa: Yep. Completely separate. Okay, Robotic Imaging Inc. Interesting. All right, so I learned something new today. Did I guess wrong? Okay so the, so far, based on your take on consumers, so you talked about retailers and landlords it’s, you did this, interesting survey results in here and, I think they, they responded to

what areas are worse? Same? No impact or better. And, it looks like the biggest, experience that’s better is the website experience. But promotions and offers seem to be better product availability. AI has helped that at least to the consumer pricing is, there’s 25 percent thought it’s better because of AI.

And very and less thought it was worse. There are some interesting impacts. The biggest worse is customer service. So whether that’s chatbots and whatnot, so people clearly don’t think it’s improved customer service,

[00:20:15] Anjee Solanski: which is great for us, right? Chris, because it’s going to mean that they’re going to go brick and mortar more often.

I think that’s the biggest issue, right? With AI from a Online perspective. Look, I deal with it, cause I’m always secret shopping or for my own personal shopping experience. I hate having to talk to a chat bot versus picking up the phone and having a conversation. And in some instances they may not have a customer service number bot, and it’s all done via email.

And it’s. It’s you just want to talk to someone and get it resolved versus let me explain it to you. Now, let me upload a photo. Now let me be redirected. It’s I’m so confused. I think the one group that does it really well online from a customer service is, honestly, it’s, it, to me it’s still Amazon does a phenomenal job.

Like they. They have it figured out. They at Shopify have it figured out, but I think these other brands are still trying to figure things out. I think so. I think it’s that perspective is if you don’t, if you’re giving the consumer one option to have a conversation, and that’s either through a chat bot or chat chatting with an assistant or email

[00:21:30] Chris Ressa: Yeah, I think the consumer won’t love the customer service experience until the brands, businesses, retailers, that for that matter, in any industry, give the AI decision making ability, because most of the time, every time I talk to someone about this is the reason the chatbot doesn’t work is because their issues nuanced.

They’re hoping to make a deal with the person on the other side, which typically there is some deal to be made. But the chatbot doesn’t have the ability to do that.

[00:22:06] Anjee Solanski: A hundred percent. You’ve hit the nail on the head. I, it just basically goes into a circular conversation and answers. There are three responses out there.

They’ve even coded to respond by and if you, and you get frustrated and then they say goodbye and you’re like, what just happened

[00:22:24] Chris Ressa: here? If the chatbot, here’s the one that really gets me is when the, When they just post the FAQs links in the chatbot. Yes. I’m like, come on. I couldn’t, I don’t need you to send me the

[00:22:37] Anjee Solanski: FAQs.

[00:22:38] Chris Ressa: If that was the answer, I would have just stopped at the FAQs. I’m reaching you because that doesn’t help.

[00:22:43] Anjee Solanski: And it makes you wonder, right? It makes you wonder, okay, retailer, do you think your customers are, not that well informed it’s hello, who’s paying attention to

[00:22:55] Chris Ressa: this? I’m gonna give them the benefit of the doubt, which is they’re in very infancy testing stages, is what I would say.

[00:23:03] Anjee Solanski: All right.

[00:23:04] Chris Ressa: That’s a better. I’m gonna give, I’m gonna give them the benefit of the doubt.

[00:23:07] Anjee Solanski: Okay.

[00:23:09] Chris Ressa: I think they’re just testing things to see what works. ’cause ’cause if it works on 50% of the customers, then there’s some positive to that and before they get to the place where they have to solve for every issue.

If you can solve for the things within inside the bell curve. That’s probably works.

[00:23:26] Anjee Solanski: In our report states it right that there’s been an improvement in the overall customer service by about 13 percent. So it’s good that they are listening, paying attention and refining.

[00:23:41] Chris Ressa: Here’s one for you.

You ready for it? Let me give you a tough one. You ready? Okay, go for

[00:23:47] Anjee Solanski: it.

[00:23:48] Chris Ressa: When is someone going to go, Maybe you could just give me the year we are in. We’ll start there. When does someone in our industry, in the retail real estate industry go, Wow, AI has really exploded in our industry. It’s everywhere.

[00:24:06] Anjee Solanski: I would have to say that at this time, that’s to me, I would have to forecast that out quite a ways. A significant amount of time because it’s really going to be dependent upon the user.

And

[00:24:24] Chris Ressa: so are we talking 5, 10, 15 years?

[00:24:28] Anjee Solanski: To go wow, I would say probably

[00:24:33] Chris Ressa: and we went wow, because what’s happening 10 years from now? What’s going on that made us go, wow, this is, look at what AI is doing, holy cow, come take a look at my computer, look what this thing’s doing.

[00:24:45] Anjee Solanski: I would say, look, I think maybe 10 years might be too far, wow, that’s a, this is a really good question you’re making me think this morning, but I would say, maybe it’s going to be less time, because I’m already I personally use AI, and I have to tell you, I’m already wowed by AI.

The very little that I’m doing with AI today, and that’s more so from a task oriented perspective. So if I can say, okay, let me take by example, all of my leases, and feed it through some sort of AI. And it tells me, Okay. In the next five years here, all of your leases that are expiring and comp it against, what market rent forecasted will be.

And then, spit out like a whole bell curve. That’s. We’re already doing parts of all of that, but I think we’re going to see that happen far sooner from call it an asset management perspective or a portfolio optimization perspective. That’s already happening today. And I think that’s going to happen far faster.

That’s what I’m saying. It’s like, when you say AI, it has to be specific to the task.

[00:26:01] Chris Ressa: I’ll give you the, when the people will be wowed.

[00:26:04] Anjee Solanski: Okay. I want to hear it.

[00:26:06] Chris Ressa: Because there’s like I, to your point, I don’t think a lot of people, even though it is, would think that something like that is quote unquote artificial intelligence. I’m using air quotes. So I think people will be wowed when to get your system to allow for AI, there needs to be significantly less manual entry to get there.

So by example, In order to, for what you just talked about, there has to be a place where all that stuff is stored, and then the, and you have it nice and a nice little pretty bow for the AI to go and read it and pull it out. I want to when people will be wowed I think is when you can leave an absolute mess and I can go in and figure everything out when they’re the manual entry is very little to zero and you could have a mess and I can figure it all out.

[00:27:13] Anjee Solanski: Interesting so basically cloning a team to basically figure it out.

[00:27:20] Chris Ressa: I think at the end of the day, I think that’s part of the slowness is that. Everyone has to be in a position for the AI to actually work. And it takes, it’s people that get it up when the AI does things that when it can take an entire mess and sort through it and it can go to you, Oh, don’t worry about that, don’t manually do all this.

Don’t like move these into folders so that you think I’m going into the right folder and reading the right docs. And who cares? I don’t care if it says. lease on it or purchase and sale agreement, I’m going to know by reading the words on it, what agreement it is.

You don’t have to code it anywhere for me.

So I know that this is a lease.

[00:28:09] Anjee Solanski: Yeah. I know. Do you feel like that day is going to come sooner than five years?

[00:28:16] Chris Ressa: Man, if I knew that, I’d go get a lottery ticket today, but I’m not sure. It doesn’t seem like that’s where the technology is going, and just as like you’re looking in any industry, I think the technology, like, where they’re focused on it, whoever they is, I don’t know who they is, it feels like they’re focused on it in different ways today.

But I think that’s the wow factor, when it just does and there’s no setup for the doing.

[00:29:00] Anjee Solanski: Now, I agree with you on that piece. It’s almost like you just, yeah, you’re buying, a layer of software in it and you just lay, layer it on and boom, it just like starts to do its

[00:29:11] Chris Ressa: thing. Yeah. Yeah.

And then I think I think when the other wow factor will be when Limitations on things start to

When limitations on certain things start to dissipate if you use Alexa and Siri today Like, if you’re sitting there, and I, and Siri’s telling you, I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that you want to throw your phone, right? When that stops happening, and it gets what you’re saying as quickly as a human being does, regardless of your, if you have one bar or five bars on your phone, to me, Those are the types of things I think when people will be wowed.

[00:30:04] Anjee Solanski: Yeah. And I think we’re far from that, because there’s, yeah I agree. I think we’re still a ways from that happening. I still struggle with. Asking questions and having bizarre answers coming back at me.

[00:30:21] Chris Ressa: Yeah. From yeah, all the Alexa and Siri. And I think that’s those are some pretty interesting applications.

That’ll be that’ll be interesting. We already have LED lights at a shopping center, right? And there are, oh I don’t know what the name is, but there’s all these controls for LED lighting that you don’t have with regular old school lighting. Now there’s still a lot of shopping centers that need to be LED Lit.

But instead of going into the computer program and setting all these things for the lighting at this time and this time, and then I want it to come on and turn off, I don’t know, can I just go, Hey Siri, turn the lights on every center in California that I own at 6 a. m. tomorrow.

Thanks. And at 6 a. m. the lights go on. That’s when I’ll be wowed.

[00:31:18] Anjee Solanski: Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you.

[00:31:23] Chris Ressa: I don’t know how, I don’t know, I have no idea how far we are away with it, but that’s if we’re looking for wow factor, that’s what I’m going to be. Wow. We had all these self driving car ambitions years ago.

You don’t hear about them anymore. I’d love those.

[00:31:37] Anjee Solanski: Yeah. We’re still, they’re still in test mode here with Waymo in San Francisco. But to your point, I think, the last time I was, wow, was with. When Apple did their, over the years, memory slideshow, and you’re like, Oh, this is so cool.

Like it just appeared on my phone and I was like, this is pretty cool. I think it was the last time I was actually wowed.

[00:32:00] Chris Ressa: Got it. That’s a good one. Yeah, that is a good one.

[00:32:06] Anjee Solanski: But my goal is that we continue to embrace it and look, it’s not going to go anywhere because it’s here to stay. It’s not a trend.

It’s just how do we use this in a way that makes us. It just refines and improves whatever the item is, the task at hand.

[00:32:25] Chris Ressa: Fair enough. Okay. Anything else about this report that people should know?

[00:32:34] Anjee Solanski: I would say, take a read. I love that. I love your questions because I think it’s important that, it’s a conversation piece.

And granted, even though we may not be seeing a significant number of these components occurring in our day to day lives, there are still things that we can utilize AI within retail, and we just need to be ready and embrace it and figure out, and talk about it. So we learn just like we were talking about, robot the robot imaging.

[00:33:06] Chris Ressa: By the way, I’m sure it’s out there. I’m going to get it. I’m going to get after this. I’m going to get an email or a call. That’s going to say, Chris, we have that technology. Now, it costs you X, Y, Z. I can get your shopping centers lights to turn on via voice tomorrow. Watch. I’m going to get that.

I’m going to get it. I know it’s out there. I know. I’m sure I hope you do.

[00:33:27] Anjee Solanski: Yeah.

[00:33:29] Chris Ressa: I’ll let you know. I’ll let you know. All right. Anything else that we didn’t chat about that? We should Anjee.

[00:33:35] Anjee Solanski: No, I’m just looking forward to, how the next 3 months go. We’re pretty, we feel pretty optimistic. With how things have, year over year or month over spend upcoming, Amazon prime days again.

So we’re really monitoring all of this and it’s been great just to chat with you as it relates to your perspectives on retail.

[00:33:59] Chris Ressa: Ah we’re talking about the next three months, then I got something for you. I got a question. You ready?

[00:34:03] Anjee Solanski: Yeah.

[00:34:05] Chris Ressa: Were the interest rates already baked into the markets or no?

Ooh. The interest rate cuts. I

[00:34:12] Anjee Solanski: would say they were baked in, but at a slightly higher interest rate at 75 basis points versus 50.

[00:34:22] Chris Ressa: Interesting. So we have a little bit more cutting to do before we really start to feel positive impacts. You think?

[00:34:33] Anjee Solanski: I think there’s still optimism as it relates to, from a you From a consumer spend in certain categories.

So I think there’s still, people are cautiously optimistic there. I’m really focused on, okay, how are we going to end the year from a holiday spend, because I’m seeing more spend occur on travel. And and when I say travel that, with all travel costs going up people are being smart.

I’m going

[00:35:03] Chris Ressa: to spend less on products.

[00:35:04] Anjee Solanski: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So we’ll see, but

[00:35:09] Chris Ressa: you still believe you still, as you said earlier, and you still believe that sales are going to go up, notwithstanding that. A larger portion of their spend has to go to travel than maybe it did yesteryear.

[00:35:20] Anjee Solanski: Correct.

[00:35:20] Chris Ressa: Correct.

[00:35:21] Anjee Solanski: I think we’re still going to end the year like a year over year at 3.

3 or so.

[00:35:27] Chris Ressa: Yeah, the cost of flights, and there’s less of them.

[00:35:32] Anjee Solanski: Oh, it’s terrible. I can go on a whole podcast with you regarding travel spend.

[00:35:39] Chris Ressa: Maybe we’ll do that. Maybe we’ll do a recap of What happened with the travel spend?

[00:35:44] Anjee Solanski: Yeah. It’s interesting. I was, I’ve been traveling quite a bit for work and non work.

And I have to say, when you take a family of five overseas, you’re being really smart about how you’re spending, cause you got airfare that eats up probably in the majority. And then everyone wants to enjoy, The culture, the museums, the food, et cetera. So you’re seeing less shopping bags, but more spend in those areas because those are, you’re creating memories, right?

Those are memorable versus, oh let me just buy five leather bags.

[00:36:17] Chris Ressa: Sure. I would just say, so do you, have, you have three kids, Anjee? No. What’s that example? I have zero,

[00:36:26] Anjee Solanski: I have three nephews though. Oh, .

[00:36:27] Chris Ressa: Three nephews. Got it.

[00:36:29] Anjee Solanski: Like my kids.

[00:36:31] Chris Ressa: The, I would say. It is, to take three, a family of five. And I don’t have a family of five, I have a family of four, overseas, on vacation, no matter how inexpensively you try to do it, it’s a big ordeal from a cost perspective.

[00:36:51] Anjee Solanski: Oh, 100 percent renting a car to, yeah, it’s everything. The excursions alone have increased now in many parts of Europe. You mean your tickets? Price to get into a grotto is like 50. Now.

[00:37:09] Chris Ressa: Yeah, I the even just experiences in general or, the cost to get to and from to lodge yourself and then experience.

So I’ll give you one. At the end of the summer, my daughter had on her bucket list to go to the Statue of Liberty. It was an unbelievable experience. Quite candidly, we probably would have paid more to go. That doesn’t mean it was inexpensive. It’s a, it’s, it’s hard to do that one for, inexpensive for what that is, just a day like experience thing.

And by the way, I don’t know the last time you’ve been at the Statue of Liberty. But it’s pretty inspiring. If you haven’t been the next time, take an extra day that you come to New York, take an extra day and go to the Statue of Liberty.

[00:37:57] Anjee Solanski: I think I will because I’ve only seen it by helicopter years and years.

And you

[00:38:01] Chris Ressa: have to walk around the island. Yeah, go inside. We walk to the top. It’s, it was pretty, the museum they just recently built. It’s pretty cool. I’m glad. I’m really glad we did it.

[00:38:12] Anjee Solanski: Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s gonna be on my to do list when I’m out there for ICSC New York.

[00:38:17] Chris Ressa: Might be cold, but because you got to take a ferry out there, but it’ll be cold.

But it was, it’ll be worth it.

[00:38:22] Anjee Solanski: It’ll be worth it. Nonetheless. Yeah, I agree. Our memorable experiences, though, for sure. So it’s worth it’s been. Okay,

[00:38:33] Chris Ressa: Anjee, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate the time.

[00:38:39] Anjee Solanski: Thank you so much, Chris. I always enjoy it. This is a great conversation.

[00:38:44] Chris Ressa: For sure.

And I’ll see you at New York ICSC.

[00:38:46] Anjee Solanski: Sounds like a plan. See you then.