Our Approach

We at MJB Consulting approach our work very differently from our competitors.

• We are retail specialists, not general economists. Retail is our passion and our obsession: we bring to it a depth of knowledge and level of nuance that simply cannot be found elsewhere.
• We are retained by a wide range of clients in the public, non-profit and private sectors, and we are intimately familiar with the imperatives, perspectives and predispositions of each.
• We are in tune with the newest trends and the latest thinking, while also recognizing that they are more readily and quickly embraced in some communities than others.
• We do not believe in any sort of “new normal”. The future will not simply be an extrapolation of the present, but rather, something very different. We see our role as one of discerning and understanding these paradigm shifts before they happen.
• We believe that creativity results from the blending of otherwise disparate cultures and perspectives, of both the lessons to be learned in far-away places as well as the particulars of a place and its people.
• We have worked across all of North America and beyond, in communities large and small, in big-city Downtowns and rural “Main Streets”, in pedestrian-oriented settings and automobile-dependent ones.
• We fully immerse ourselves in our study areas as if we were locals, caffeinating in the coffeehouses, eating in the greasy spoons, speaking with residents, reading the blogs, spending the weekend, etc. – a unique process that we call “total immersion”.
• We feel that quantitative methodologies must be combined with qualitative ones, and we value the role of psycho-graphics in dictating consumer choices, having even developed our own proprietary lifestyle-segmentation scheme.
• We offer vast experience and specialized expertise in several non-traditional formats, like Downtown/”Main Street” districts, “urbanist” mixed-use projects, university towns as well as ethnically/socioeconomically-diverse markets.
• We are often able to identify latent potential where others cannot, unearthing market niches and tenanting opportunities that more conventional approaches and local observers might have missed.
• We place great emphasis on and possess a keen understanding of the retailer’s point-of-view, what they look for and worry about, what entices and repels them, how they respond to different types of opportunities and demands, etc.
• We do not pull punches. We will not always tell you what you want to hear, but rather, what you need to hear — even if it hurts — while at the same time generating excitement for what is in fact possible.
• We do not write reports that sit on shelves. Rather than boring narratives and data dumps, our work product entertains, interprets and educates, offering a step-by-step guide for what to do with all of that information.
• We maintain an extensive database of national and regional retailers willing to locate in different kinds of submarkets and settings, including smaller “chain-lets” that typically pass under the radar of the leasing community.
• We boast a successful track record with practical implementation, including partnerships with local leasing professionals and municipal/non-profit entities in the recruitment of targeted retailers to some very challenging locations.
• We are a boutique consultancy, meaning that it will be our Principal – and not some junior associate – serving as the Project Manager and developing all of the work product.