Retail expert sees potential new growth opportunities

Chris Lee is talking to a lot of foreign companies and from his experience with Forever 21 he sees some new changes coming in the US retail environment. Specifically he sees the weak real estate market offering retailers a chance to cross borders in a unique growth opportunity. With real estate pricing cheap world wide foreign players can take advantage to have an immediate impact with more choice locations. REIT's have a lot of vacancy but a new concept may be for the bigger box players who have excessive space and long term leases may look to sub space or reconfigure current locations. As an example WMT's fornt of store 10-15,000 square feet in front of registers where today a lot of fast food and other traffic movers could be replaced in an improving economy to try to keep that customer who traded down in downturn to keep them in subsequent upturn. Does an Apple store replace Pizza express? How about if Federated or Dillards or Sears shrinks their store and brings in Wet Seal, Saphora or others in front of store. With both the need to increase returns and opportunistic foreign tenants potentially available this could be a new paradigm.