Opening a New Electronic Store?

What is the name of the job position in a company that is responsible for opening a new store or location?

• This would not be the person who finds and selects the location. That would be business development correct?  This would be the person who is responsible for the myriad of details and tasks required to open a store once the location has been secured.  For example who is responsible for opening a Lowes or a Home Depot.  They would be responsible for ordering the initial inventory, hiring the employees, coordinating the opening, securing permits, and any other task required to open a location.

• Answer:

  This will vary a lot within different companies. Sometimes the organization may assign a team from within the operations department. There are some organizations that will actually have a director or VP of real estate. Some organizations will hire a third party commercial real estate agent to locate prospective properties. Once a few prospective locations have been narrowed down, there will be a committee that will assess the location. When I worked in commercial real estate, this is what was the norm. When we dealt with Starbucks, we would first submit locations for consideration to their third party reps. I don't know the exact process afterwards. There are some organizations where the CEO themselves will get involved. They will typically have other VPs in on the decision making, and will have their assistants deal with the minutia. When I was a tenant rep, I often dealt directly with many CEOs who liked to micromanage. They alone would make the decision to move forward after I presented about why that location was a better fit than other options. In your example of listing Home Depot and Lowes. They are very large organzations. If I remember correctly, they had people in operations that hired out third party tenant reps from commercial real estate firms. They familiarize the reps with a property criteria, growth plans, and proprietary details about financials. Once properties met the initial criteria, a board within the organization would conduct due dilligence. Then they have their employees within operations (who hire out construciton estimates to a contractor) to estimate costs to build and operate. Based on that information, they have an estimate of what they would be willing to pay. Their legal team then crafts a LOI (Letter of intent) and then forwards it through their tenant rep. Once all terms have been negotiated. The team at operations may have a contractor that they work with, who handles the licenses and permits. In most cases though, they owner (real estate developer) will do what is called a "build to suit" and they take on all responsibility to build according to the tenant. Most tenants have a standard set of plans they can use. this is why big retailers all "look the same." This makes construction costs more predictable. And it makes construction faster because the tenant can just hand off the plans to the real estate developer (modifications may be made based on local municipal standards).