Malibu Market Isn’t Following Major Retail Trends

Robert Cohen is an Vice Chairman at RKF.

LOS ANGELES—Malibu is marching to its own retail drum. The market’s naturally isolated geography and wealthy demographics has insulated it from any major retail trends, including ecommerce and daily needs. Malibu sees a fair amount of tourists and has a healthy local shopping base that has kept small brick-and-mortar shops open.

“There are a lot of headwinds out there for retail in general, but Malibu is really insulated from a lot of that because it is so local and because of the wealth. It is probably going to do better than most markets,” Robert Cohen, Vice Chairman of RKF, tells GlobeSt.com, adding that the market is even insolated from other market challenges like ecommerce. “There is no doubt that ecommerce is disrupting brick-and-mortar, but that really hasn’t happened in Malibu yet because it is such a local market. Once ecommerce-driven brick-and-mortar grows, it may come into the Malibu market,”