There are 32 Carroll businesses working with the Retail Coach, who is collecting customer data and creating a demographic profile of the community and its primary retail trade area along with a demand outlook for the next five years. One of these businesses, Drees Co., has used the results to initiate an inventory expansion into a new product. “As a local business owner, the Retail Coach data has given us the opportunity to sell GE Café appliances,” says Howie Drees. “GE Café appliances are higher end appliances that we have been trying for months to persuade our supplier to allow us to sell. It wasn’t until I sent them the data that showed our 30,000 plus (population) market area and the estimated two percent growth in appliance sales that they immediately approved us.” This will allow Drees Co. to expand retail space into the Drees rental on the corner of U.S. Highway 30 and Carroll Street. “The data we were given from the Retail Coach study reaffirms the potential of future appliance sales,” Drees says. The Retail Coach is a Texas-based national retail consulting and market research and development firm who has been contracted to work with the Carroll Area Development Corporation (CADC) for the next three years. The identified goal is to help existing businesses and to recruit new ones into the Carroll area. CADC Executive Director, Shannon Landauer, says the Drees success story is exactly what they were seeking with this partnership. “There is a lot of opportunity within the Carroll market, and this data is helping to strengthen the case for business growth in the area,” she says. “There are two pieces of this initiative that are both part of growing our community-attracting new business, but more importantly, growing our existing business community.”
