Neighborhood Goods is not a traditional department store, though it does stock an array of brands for apparel, skin-care products, home-decor items and electronic gadgets.
The retailer subleases space in its first store — a 14,000-square-foot unit at Legacy West, in Plano, Texas — to brands seeking physical space. For a fee, these brands receive placement in the store, as well as help with such services as sales staff, marketing and retail design that they might not otherwise be able to afford. Neighborhood Goods’ brand partners include Allswell (bedding), Draper James (apparel), MeUndies (underwear), Primary (children’s apparel) and Stadium Goods (sneakers). The roster of brands represented in the store will revolve.
“There needs to be more done with the retail space to lower the barriers to entry and [to] bring brands to the door in a more efficient way,” said Neighbor Goods co-founder and CEO Matt Alexander, speaking to Vox. “The real estate industry operates on a totally different pace than startups. Startups want to move quickly and easily and not be tied down to a 10-year lease.”
Neighborhood Goods will open more stores, some of them in tertiary markets, says Anarghya Vardhana, a partner at venture capital investment firm Maveron, which invested in the startup. “A brand like Allbirds is opening up stores in New York, L.A. [and] San Francisco, but most startups won’t have the capital or human resources to launch stores in a secondary market,” Vardhana told Vox. "With the proliferation of Instagram, a lot of people have learned about these direct-to-consumer brands and want to access them in stores, and so we think of Neighborhood Goods as a place where they’ll discover new brands.”
Neighborhood Goods is among the retailers participating in the Retail in Focus program at the 2018 ICSC New York Deal Making, to be held Dec. 4–6 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
The Retail in Focus program will feature several of the emerging brands that are now reshaping the shopping environment for consumers. These include the "digital natives" that are moving on to their next phase by creating a physical retail footprint; the creators of interactive installations that are driving unique customer experiences; and similar retailers that are captivating their audiences in new and creative ways.
By Brannon Boswell
Executive Editor, Commerce + Communities Today
