1. What are Trade Area Systems’ key services? We make software for retail organizations that helps them accelerate their site selection and other key decisions that are part of the overall real estate process. The industry has traditionally been lax when it comes to how they manage real estate data. When a prospective customer comes to us, their data, which is typically in the form of spreadsheets, PDFs, and even emails, is often incomplete and siloed in multiple places in their organization. We collect a customer’s proprietary data about their stores, customers, competitors and other info, and bring it all into our platform. … Ultimately, TAS allows our clients to collaboratively make better decisions faster about where to open new stores.
2. Who are your clients and how has that changed over time? Large retailers, grocery and drugstore chains, restaurants, shopping-center owners and developers, and retail brokers. There are emerging verticals too where we’re getting lots of inquiries, such as urgent care centers.
3. What is most important for retailers to consider in siting stores? We call that info situational and site characteristics. Situational characteristics are population counts, age, education, income, potential spending, types of businesses in the area, and the location of competition are all factors that enter into the evaluation process for retailers. … Site characteristics include ease of access, parking, visibility, signage and traffic counts. The weight of each of these items in the decision-making process differs based on the retailer.
4. The company recently relocated to downtown Providence. What has the location allowed you to do more easily? We’re able to accommodate guests much better, and we have new facilities, such as a training room where we can bring customers. Long term, our location and our office itself will help us recruit great people. Providence is still somewhat of a blank canvas for young tech companies, and we were eager to plant our flag here.
5. What’s the greatest challenge of moving a company? We had identified our space last summer, but there were a lot of hiccups associated with a big move that kept the process moving pretty slowly. … All the literal and figurative heavy lifting is pretty much done.