Locally-Driven Business Recruitment: Take Charge of Your Business Mix

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Featuring Joe Getz and Mark Lohbauer of NJ’s JGSC Group

Hosted in the heart of downtown Summit – a Main Street New Jersey community since 2014.
This 66th NJDI features a day-long intensive workshop teaching how to run a business recruitment program within a variety of budgets and staffing constraints. Shopper interest in downtown business districts continues to rise as a preferred alternative to the mall or shopping center experience, but how well can your district attract visitors if it is dominated by nail salons, professional offices, or vacant storefronts?

There is something that you can do to manage your retail mix, and this NJDI is a full day training program that will teach you the principals and techniques of that process. The program focuses on three goals to help you:

1. Identify the nature of your retail district, and its retail potential
2. Learn the process that major retailers and shopping center managers use to recruit retailers;
3. Develop skills that you can apply in your district to begin recruiting retail businesses

The workshop is designed for downtown management and revitalization program staff, board and volunteers, as well as elected and appointed officials who want to get ‘under the hood’ of locally-driven business recruitment.

Agenda

8:15 – 9:00 am Coffee, Networking, and Registration
9:00 – 9:45 am Introduction: The principals of retail recruiting
9:45 – 10:30 am Many kinds of retail district—what kind is yours?
10:30 – 10:45 am Break
11:00 -11:30 am What’s important? The siting process from the retailer’s perspective
11:30am – 12:00 pm “I want Trader Joe’s!”: The siting criteria of top retailers
12:00 -1:15 pm Lunch on your own in downtown Summit
1:15 – 2:15 pm Know what you need: Research your local market
2:15 – 2:30 pm Break
2:30 – 3:15 pm Know who you need: Find prospects
3:15 – 4:00 pm Get what you want: Steps you can take to attract your prospects

About Joe and Mark: Joe Getz and Mark Lohbauer are the principals of JGSC Group, and they are well known in the downtown retail communities of New Jersey, New York, and many other states across the country. For over 25 years, JGSC has been bringing the tools that they originally developed for major malls into the business districts of communities with downtown retail centers. With their help, small business districts have been able to understand the nature of their district, determine their optimal potential retail mix, and to manage their mix by recruiting the retail businesses that they want and need.