How Burlington Stores Is Navigating a Changing Environment
Even though the last six months to a year have been rough, the retailer is growing at a rate of 100 stores per year, says the director of real estate.
LOS ANGELES—During a fireside chat about the corporate tenants perspective at the recent GlobeSt. Net Lease national conference here at the JW Marriott LA LIVE, Eric Corpuz, director of real estate at Burlington Stores Inc. provided an insider’s look into the needs and challenges for his company as well as today’s tenants.
He noted that the past six to 12 months have been rough. “For Burlington and a lot of other national retailers especially in the off price segment, we had wanted to see landlords develop turn-key spaces for us, to do our build out, but we have seen some divert their capital elsewhere,” he said. “If it isn’t a build to suit, or we have to apply our own capital, it is more difficult.”
That said, the retailer has evolved to become more flexible. Corpuz reports Burlington Stores is growing at a rate of roughly 100 stores per year. “It has been a good evolution for Burlington and we hope to continue to do that,” he said.
“There is no high priority for growing in a certain geography. We are growing nationwide. We are in 46 states and Puerto Rico. We have had to pivot a lot because a lot of our growth has to do with inventory of space for us.”
Also, the increasing construction delays have had an impact on its roll out of new locations. “HVAC is a big portion of our build out and we have seen that go from a few months to many months,” he said.
Burlington Stores primarily leases its properties, Corpuz explained. It does own a dozen or so assets “but we are a retailer, we don’t want to be a landlord.”
It follows a strategy that it calls seed points, which is “a road path that allows my brokers and I to identify what are my priorities. We use a lot of analytics to get us to a seed point strategy. It doesn’t mean we won’t look at something outside that seed point strategy. But it follows a sound market plan strategy.”
As a retail tenant, we don’t want to be by ourselves, Corpuz continued. “We want to benefit from the synergy by being around other national retail tenants. That is what we are looking for. That synergy and co-tenancy will benefit us as a company. We like to co-tenant with our competitors. We like having a big anchor. We want to be part of a big center.”
In terms of its footprint, the company’s sweet spot now is 25,000 square feet with the smallest it will go at the moment being 20,000 square feet. “We have evolved so one day we could go smaller, but not now. I do foresee us making some considerations to smaller space [but] we want to make sure we have adequate parking.”