How, Exactly?

Pedal Retailers get great deals on the best retail spaces, and the Powerhouse Business Plan is the most important part of our secret sauce. Like, if the sauce is marinara, the Powerhouse Business Plan is the tomatoes. Through our process, we figure out your business model and real estate criteria so we show up to brokerage professionally and prepared to transact, and as a result, your business becomes super desirable to prospective landlords. 

We are so confident in this approach because we (and our clients) have seen the results time and again, and accordingly, we won’t represent retailers without a Powerhouse Business Plan. We’re in the business of making dreams come true, and the Powerhouse Business Plan is the key.

Absolutely! If you already have funding in place for your business, you’ll get a huge benefit from putting together your Powerhouse Business Plan and getting equipped to navigate retail real estate with your broker. In fact, the Dream Space Accelerator is the best way to protect your investment. 

While we don’t discount the Dream Space Accelerator, we do offer AfterPay and Klarna to spread the cost over multiple payments. 

And, a word on tight budgets…

Most Pedal Retailers are on tight budgets, and all of them are looking to manage their expenses as efficiently as possible. Real talk: opening a brick-and-mortar business requires a considerable upfront investment – there’s no way around that. When you’re starting out, the temptation to save a buck on upfront expenses is real, but cutting corners almost always ends with costly mistakes and major problems down the road.

That’s a long way of saying that the Dream Space Accelerator is absolutely worth it. Pedal Retailers save $115,000+ on their leases. This Accelerator is the best long-term investment you can make in your business.

The main purpose of the application is to make sure the businesses we accept into the Accelerator will be successful in securing a lease at the end of the program.

A good candidate for Dream Space is passionate about their business and has the determination and resilience to work hard to bring it to life.

The application is pretty short – it shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes to complete. We ask questions about you as a person, your current business (if you’re already operational), and the concept you plan to develop in Dream Space. You’ll also upload a few core financial documents (tax returns and a personal financial statement). 

Many Accelerator participants are in the earliest stages of developing their concepts. This application (and Pedal as a whole) is a judgment-free zone, so answer the application questions as honestly and openly as possible and don’t worry if you don’t have it all figured out yet.

We get it. Personal financial information is extremely…personal…and most of us have a lot of complicated feelings around money. Real talk: your personal finances will absolutely, positively be a part of landlords’ and lenders’ decisions about whether or not they will work with you. So we’re not asking to see them because we want to judge you or ask to borrow your yacht. We need to make an initial assessment of the likelihood that you’ll be successful in securing financing. We will keep your financial information confidential.

Don’t worry – in the event that we determine that your situation is not a good fit for the Dream Space Accelerator, we have many other resources available to help you pursue your brick-and-mortar goals, and we will be as specific as possible about what parts of your application affected our decision. You are always welcome to apply again in the future. We hope you will.

Searching for real estate happens after you complete the Accelerator. We don’t take Pedal Retailers out to market to find spaces until their funding is secured, since they’re not in a position to actually sign a lease until then.   

If you’re in the DC or Charlotte Metro area, we would be proud to represent any Dream Space Accelerator graduate in finding your space! For Dream Space graduates elsewhere in the US, we will refer you to a reputable and trustworthy broker in your area. Trust us, they will be thrilled to work with you – with your Powerhouse Business Plan, funding, and retail real estate knowledge, you’ll be a dream client.

If you're not sure whether the Accelerator is for you, join us for Dream Space: The Workshop. It's a super valuable preview of what we cover in the Accelerator, and we promise you'll get a lot out of it even if you don't continue on with us.