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Bu~,~on= <br />IDentifying Customers South Bend, IN: CommunitylD Proposal <br />communities. If you sign with Buxton, people all over the country are using this data <br />and can help guide you. <br />Did you hire a fulltime recruiter or did you handle the target contact with in -house <br />staff? <br />In addition to doing retail development, I do property acquisition, demolition <br />coordination, anal many other things. Once we realized we had all of this great <br />information and had cco tools to use it, we got all of our real estate reps and developers <br />together, gave them the data, had a Buxton rep in to explain the data, and thetj have bee n <br />using the data to bring retail to South Bend. When you don't have time to do it yourself, <br />find people that do the job and use them, use them, use them. <br />If you hired someone, what qualifications did you look for? <br />A real estate background with some knowledge of marketing or a marketer with <br />knowledge of retail would have been helpful. I think every person you talk to about <br />Buxton would have a different answer based upon the needs. <br />If you did it in-house, what qualifications/training did the person ha ve? <br />In my case, we got very involved with ICSC (International Council of Shopping Centers) <br />and tried to learn as much as possible about retail and how it works. <br />Did any of the targets suggest new construction as an option? <br />Several of the retailers have b uilt nezv construction or have become tenants in nezc~ <br />construction projects. <br />How many interested targets did you have and of those how many ended up moving <br />to your location? How many of those are still there? <br />Our process for our retail list zvas a bit diffe rent. Our market is a pretty cor~cmercial <br />heavy market and so we were looking for retailers that were here or looking to expand. <br />We were also trying to find tenants for older commercial corridors or for other areas. We <br />have had one true success off of our selected retailer list, but we have several that were on <br />our original match list that we used the Buxton data to attract or support their decisions. <br />The psychographic data was a good tool in those decisions. <br />Of interested targets, what was their timelin a for opening a location in your area? <br />Texas Roadhouse, is open and is operating well above expectations. And with operating <br />taxes, sales taxes and employee taxes that the restaurant pays, our study has paid for <br />itself with just this one hit. <br />If you had it to do all over again, would you do anything different? If so, please <br />explain. <br />Yes. We would have created a retail strategy and thoug)Tt through the process a bit <br />better. The advantage that new users to the Buxton process have is the experiences and <br />31 <br />