CBD Retailer Has Confidence that New Locations Will Be a Success with Locate’s Tech
“Almost all the locations we opened through Locate were already top-performing in CBD Kratom. Locate will show you how to find a better location than one you currently have and how to duplicate your successful stores. It definitely works.”Who Is CBD Kratom?
CBD Kratom offers the largest selection of high quality CBD and Kratom products. David Palatnik, President of CBD Kratom, discovered Locate in 2019 at the AICSC conference in New York. After seeing Locate’s tech in action, he started working with Locate to expand CBD Kratom locations into new markets.Navigating Expansion into New Markets as a New Brand in the CBD Industry
Prior to being introduced to the Locate team, David worked with local brokers in each market he was looking to expand to. “Some of them did a great job and we found some really good locations. But, we also had a lot of challenges with new sites. They weren’t always THE BEST. They didn’t perform as well as other sites. We needed to know why one site was performing worse than the other and vice versa.” Site selection technology, powered by mobile data and AI, would allow David and his team to easily compare robust data on a successful store’s location with a potential new site. That way, they could easily rule out the bad sites and zero in on ones they knew would work. Another challenge David faced was just getting landlords to trust him and the brand. Because CBD Kratom was new in the industry, some landlords were skeptical of opening up a store on their property. “In the past, a few said no to our model. Locate helped us convince them because we were using a plug-in AI platform to detect that our customers were in fact in a specific area.” David was able to show landlords how Locate minimized risk, giving them more confidence that CBD Kratom was going to succeed in their building or center.Improving Store Performance by Leveraging Customer Behavior Insights
A primary goal of any new retail brand is to dive deep into competitor data. Site selection technology was able to show CBD Kratom how many potential customers, similar to their customers, live, work, and drive in a certain area. “One of the coolest features is that we can see more than just the customer’s location, like the cannibalization rate, so we can tell if a new location will take away business from another.” Because CBD Kratom was able to leverage powerful customer data, they could make more informed, strategic site decisions, like if a location was too close or too far, compared to another. “Now, when we visit a city, we already know if this is a market where we can open five, seven or even ten stores, which has a big effect on our operations.”Validating New Sites to Expand to Quickly and Efficiently
CBD Kratom was able to validate that Locate’s technology was working within the first few months. “Almost all the locations we opened through Locate were already top-performing in CBD Kratom. Those locations were all backed up by data, and we knew from the moment we opened that we would have customers coming in.” Moving forward, CBD Kratom will no longer rely on multiple local agents in different cities to drive their site selection process. Instead, David works closely with a Locate broker, equipped with the technology they need. We have our dedicated agent who works with local agents to find the right place in every city. He streamlines the process for us because we don’t have to waste time meeting with different agents now. “We’re able to see all of our new locations on the platform, compare them to each other quickly, and make fast decisions to get better deals done.”Next Steps with Locate
This year, CBD Kratom is working to further refine their site forecasting modeling and expand to at least one additional market and open 70 new locations. “Locate feels like a team to me. Whenever we look into a location, they are there every step of the way. Our new sites are possible because of this and the data they provide.”More About Locate
Locate is a tech-enabled retail brokerage that analyzes over 180 million anonymous mobile devices to help retailers understand their customers and their behavior. To learn more about their data-driven site selection process, get in touch with them here.
