A decade feels like an eternity until it's over.

When you live inside the commercial real estate bubble, a ten year lease term doesn’t seem like a big deal — like a long weekend on the Cape (since that’s obviously where you’re going if you work in CRE.) But to many new retailers, the thought of committing to a lease for TEN WHOLE YEARS feels more like being sentenced to the federal pen for a white collar crime.

If that new retailer sounds like you, here are some things to keep in mind:

+ Your lease locks down the rules for the entire term.The longer your lease, the longer you have to operate your business on your own terms since you’ll have negotiated the rent and other important financia...

Many first-time retailers are pretty surprised to find out that it takes such a looooong time to sign a lease and get open. Some even think, “oh wow, that’s like being pregnant with a baby,” but they are wrong, because it’s really like being pregnant with a donkey. How do we know this? We googled it. Turns out, donkeys have a gestation period of 11 - 15 months (also — unrelated but fascinating — a female donkey is called a jenny.)

Anyhow, if you can get your lease signed in the time it takes to bake a human baby cake, good for you! But it’s more typical for you to be on burro-ed time (fair warning - more donkey puns coming.)

There are at least four distinct stages in the process, and these...

Have you ever been 💘 love bombed by retail real estate? Oh, yes, it’s a thing.

It goes like this: you’re just minding your own business when POW! [cue the romantic lighting and flattery] In an email, phone call, or personal visit — it’s a retail real estate broker who 😍 loooooves what you’re doing and has an amazing new location for your amazing business, or she wants to help you find some because you are 🔥 hottttttt.

When you’re running a successful (or successful to outside eyes) business, it’s really just a matter of time before you’ll start receiving unsolicited offers to consider new real estate opportunities. Now I know from personal experience running a retail business day-in-and-...

Most of the time, our first conversation with a prospective Pedal Retailer makes them very happy. They’re happy (or at least relieved) to hear that (a) they can do what they’re dreaming of doing, and (b) we can help them do it. But without fail, we eventually make our way to the topic that triggers the cortisol...

We always manage to upset people when we answer the question, “so how long is this going to take?”

Since we’re committed to “real talk, always,” we’re honest with our clients about the realistic timeframe to opening a bricks-and-mortar business. We explain that the process takes anywhere from six to 18 months, and that seems to be about six to 18 months longer than they wer...

Yurt, studio-apartment, mansion, mid-century split level…whatever. Most of us are lucky enough to have somewhere to call home. 🏠 That means that everyone comes to the table with a varying level of real estate knowledge. Have you rented an apartment? Bought a house? Binge watched House Hunters on HGTV (who hasn’t?) If that’s the case, you’ve brushed up against the residential real estate world.

So many people who come to us eager to start a business want to transpose their residential knowledge into this new commercial context.

I'm here today to break down why you should leave your residential baggage at home when searching for retail space.

Here are a few of the biggies we hear a...

One of us at Pedal is in full wedding-planning mode, and the other is mid-way through year eight of marriage. We LOVE using the marriage metaphor for leasing, because this sh!t is SERIOUS, and it's not always pretty.

Here's how we see the leasing process through this exceedingly relevant lens:

Writing your business plan is an exercise in self-exploration. It's your time to travel through Europe with all your belongings on your back, drinking cheap wine, and going to that sketchy club with Franz-with-the-hair from Bruges. When you come back home, you'll return to your life, but you'll know yourself (and probably some other people) a whole lot better.

Okay, so this "self-exploration" isn'...

Like all long term relationships, your feelings toward your business will change and evolve over time. I don't know a seasoned retailer who doesn't have a big ol' mixed bag of feelings about their business. Few things in life can bring so much joy and frustration, pride and defeat - sometimes in a single day.

For retailers just starting out, it can be confusing and a little scary when they start feeling REAL feelings (other than excitement and joy) about their budding business. Is it time to throw in the towel? Probably not.

Go with me here on a little analogy trip...

The romance starts with butterflies and flirting: What if instead of counting these beans all day, I finally open...