We get a lot of inquiries from brands looking to launch brick and mortar retail. Around this time of year, these conversations can be a little uncomfortable.
“Hi, we want to launch a retail store.”
“Cool. In Q1?”
“No. Before holiday.”
Take a deep breath. Another. One more. Maybe sit down. I’m going to give it to you straight here.
Retail stores take time to build. They take time to design. If you’re going into a space that isn’t move-in ready (e.g. every wall, air conditioning unit, stair, and toilet is exactly where you need it to be), they take time to get permitted. There are always surprises. Thanksgiving is in five months, and every other retailer is trying to get stores open by then too. And they’ve already started designing. And have probably already filed for permits.
I’m not telling you it’s impossible for you to start now and get open by November 15. I am telling you that the odds are against you.
That said, there are some decisions you can make to give yourselves the best chance of a pre-holiday launch, and I can tell you about those too.
Luckily, those decisions live in the site selection and design phases, aka the project phases most within your control. By focusing on these things, and by making informed decisions, you and your holiday retail hopes and dreams have a fighting chance. Here’s how.
The project phase over which you have the least amount of control is permitting. During the permit phase, you’re at the behest of municipal and state agencies tasked with reviewing your project’s construction drawings for code compliance. The process is unpredictable, and even though there are permit expediters out there who can help move things along, there are no guarantees. While many jurisdictions once offered various types of expedited, overtime, or over-the-counter reviews for simple scopes of work, these have by and large fallen by the wayside since Covid, when many municipalities were hit with staff shortages from which they’ve yet to fully recover. Simply put, there is no way to guarantee a fast turnaround on a permit, which can average 8-10 weeks of review time (though some jurisdictions take much longer, and other jurisdictions can be much quicker).
So what's the best way to account for the great permitting unknown? It’s to not be in a position of needing a permit in the first place. Informed site selection and intentional design can help you avoid the need for a permit at all. Working with an architect to assess potential spaces and identify red flags and go/no-gos could help save you from permitting purgatory. Working with that same architect to create a layout and scope of work consistent with what the jurisdiction’s building code refers to as “minor alterations” will ensure that, at most, your contractor’s subs and signage vendor might need to obtain a few trade permits for their respective areas of expertise. Giving your project back these 8-10 weeks of permitting time is the only way to have a real shot of opening a store by mid-November if you're starting the process in June.
Now that we’ve removed the uncontrollable permitting process from our timeline, we should talk about the next most unpredictable project phase – construction. Though we can plan for construction a lot better than we can for permitting, there are still a number of aspects of construction that land well outside of what we can control. From material lead times to surprise hidden conditions in the space*, there are a number of things that are unknown and unknowable when we begin a project.
So how can we account for these potential disruptions and minimize their impact? By allowing time for them to occur.
If you have twenty-two weeks to design and build a project, and no permits are required, I can see a temptation to split the time in half, giving eleven weeks to construction (a perfectly reasonable buildout duration) and eleven weeks to design. However, using that full eleven weeks for design doesn’t leave any time to bid the project, order long lead items, and mobilize contractors, things that usually happen concurrent with the permitting phase.
In order to accommodate these things within a project schedule that is absent of permitting, you need to plan for them. Direct negotiation with a trusted GC could reduce the time you need, as it removes the bid process from this timeline. But you should still allow at least six weeks for order lead time, and even then, you’re going to have to carefully source finishes and fixtures that can be delivered within your timeframe.
Distributing time in this way takes your design and documentation phase down to four to five weeks. You might be thinking – oh my gosh, that isn’t enough. But remember, design is one of the two phases over which you have the most control. It is enough if you decide it’s enough, and if your key stakeholders and decision makers prioritize it appropriately. The design phase can bog a project down right out of the gate, but with a highly engaged, knowledgeable, and decisive team in place, it doesn’t have to.
A June-to-November project isn’t a marathon. It’s a 50 yard dash.
Will you be dashing into holiday this year?
Thinking about opening a store in 2024? Or for holiday 2023? We can help! Shoot us an email at hello@prosearchitecture.com and we can schedule a call.
* I’d typically mention inspections as a big factor here as well, but if a project scope doesn’t require permits, it also typically wouldn’t need inspections. Which is a good thing, because these have the potential to totally derail a project’s schedule, especially when pushing up against the holiday season.