It has been a good couple of months for the Westerly-based startup Retail MarketPoint.
In early October, the retail real estate technology startup, which is focused on site location analytics, took home first prize at Cox Business’ seventh annual #GetStartedRI pitch competition. The win came with a $50,000 prize, including $25,000 in cash.
Recently, the company unveiled another big announcement: Retail MarketPoint has inked a partnership with Moody’s Analytics. The financial intelligence leader will add the company to its REIS network, which is Moody’s commercial real estate search platform.
“When you think about scorings and ratings, Moody’s is one of the leading financial services companies in the world,” Retail MarketPoint’s Founder John Rafferty told Rhode Island Inno. “And they are making a big splash into the commercial real estate vertical now, so it’s pretty exciting to be a part of that moving forward.”
While the headlines indicate more opportunity for Retail MarketPoint, the ultimate goal is to continue to do what it does with excellence, the essence of which is simple: allowing users to know if a potential physical location will serve their brand or concept well.
“Looking around the landscape of retail site location analytics and commercial real estate, there is a huge opportunity."
Using artificial intelligence and proprietary technology, the company can create a BrandScore for any commercial location based on data and analytics in the retail industry. Users put in any retail location in the U.S. and Retail MarketPoint generates a score that informs whether or not it's a good fit.
The score, which is conducted on a 300-point scale, is based on four components: Neighborhood, commercial, competition and retail synergy.
The neighborhood component looks at the merits of the potential location (let's call it "X") based on those people who live nearby and who would shop or eat at X normally. The commercial component, meanwhile, examines customers who would stop by X because they work nearby.
Supply and demand of a location is measured via the competition aspect. Specifically, it considers whether or not there's enough fast food restaurants in one area to keep up with the demand for fast food.
Retail synergy, in turn, examines how other area businesses could impact X, should the user decide to set up shop in the location it's examining.
“It’s not always bad to be located near a competitor,” Rafferty explained. “There may be some synergy with them. We see this with lifestyle centers or grocery-anchored centers. There are also shopping centers set up to link errands or shopping experiences together."
There's also other elements users can analyze, such as the site's visibility from the road, its parking limitations and more.
In all, Rafferty compares the BrandScore to the equivalent of a FICO score in the financial services industry, which is an important credit metric lenders use when evaluating whether or not they should issue a loan to a customer. And he hopes that the BrandScore becomes an industry standard, just like the FICO.
“Looking around the landscape of retail site location analytics and commercial real estate, there is a huge opportunity,” he said, adding that for every one retail store that closes, five new ones are opening. “The competitive landscape is kind of fragmented, and we saw nobody had really created a solution that would evaluate commercial real estate across all retails.”
Target clients include retailers, restaurants, franchisors, brokers, developers, investors and cities and towns.
The company has been bootstrapped thus far, but Rafferty is planning to raise additional capital to support rapid growth from developing partnerships, such as the one just formed with Moody’s Analytics.
“We think the opportunities in commercial real estate are tremendous,” he said.
