How Leap Empowers Physical Store Growth for Emerging Retailers
Last Updated on May 21, 2024 by Morgan Beard
In order to meet exponential retail store growth plans, LEAP needed technology purpose-made for the real estate operations side of the business.
Enter Occupier, LEAP’S single source of truth for tracking LOIs and proposals to managing the real estate leases across their portfolio.
Challenge: Preparing for Retail Store Expansion
Leap Inc. provides a platform for launching and scaling retail stores. In 2021, they had 10 storefronts in their lease portfolio and were preparing to add 10X that number of retail leases to over 100 locations across the states by 2023. To support this rapid expansion, Leap needed a robust real estate lease & transaction management solution that could keep pace with their growth.
As Leap’s Vice President of Real Estate, Rebecca Fitts, explained, “We were going to over 10 deals, and Google Sheets wasn’t a viable solution for tracking data in real time. It quickly became clear that in order to scale our business and help retailers navigate the intricacies of lease management, we needed an all-in-one online tool.”
With physical spaces facing challenges during the pandemic in 2020, Leap used this time to review and amend leases, ensuring their properties remained occupied while helping brands maintain profitability. As doors began to reopen, consumer behavior and expectations around brick-and-mortar experiences had evolved, prompting Leap to prepare for the implementation of modern real estate tools.
Solution: Ditching Legacy Tools in Favor of Modern Leasing Software
Leap partnered with Occupier, a modern leasing software platform, to streamline their real estate operations and prepare for growth. “Occupier is able to keep up with us and grow with us. Their online real estate platform is exactly what we need, especially given the size and amount of deals we are doing,” said Fitts.
The Occupier customer success team led the onboarding and training process for Leap’s real estate team. “The process of transitioning from spreadsheets, multiple emails, and slack messaging to a collaborative system like Occupier has been seamless,” Fitts noted. By consolidating lease-related communications, reports, and tasks into a centralized platform, Occupier provided a single source of truth beneficial for Leap’s business operations
Occupier’s transaction management tool provided Leap with a comprehensive view of their entire real estate pipeline and lease transaction lifecycle. As Rebecca Fitts stated, “Occupier’s transaction management product gives our real estate team a holistic perspective into the full lease transaction lifecycle. I can track a deal and measure how the rent is escalating or deescalating.” The tool offered unique insights, allowing Leap to track deals, compare properties, upload documents, and more, all in one place. “We began tracking all of our lease deal opportunities in this tool which I would estimate has saved us easily 5 hours weekly or over 260 hours annually,” Fitts noted.
“We are in the midst of a tremendous growth phase… Occupier is central to the daily work of our Real Estate team, easily saving us 260+ hours on deal making tasks annually.”
Benefits of Occupier:
The Leap Platform uses a cluster system to maximize the network effect of its storefronts in different retail markets. “An end-to-end solution like Occupier helps us, at Leap, take a mindful and informed approach to acquiring and managing our storefronts and properties,” according to Fitts.
- Real Estate Operations Truth: Occupier consolidated lease documents and communications in a centralized and collaborative digital platform.
- Real-Time Tracking: The software enabled real-time collaboration and data tracking, replacing inefficient spreadsheets.
- Lifecycle Overview: It provided a holistic view of the entire lease transaction lifecycle — from deals to proposals and lease executions.
- Time Savings: The software itself saved an estimated 260 hours annually by streamlining deal tracking processes.
- Strategic Selection: Allowed for strategic site selection and informed real estate decision-making when looking for prime retail space.
- Network Effects: Facilitated a cluster model to maximize network effects across retail markets
- Seamless Scaling: Empowered seamless scaling of Leap’s retail brand customers.
- End-to-End Management: Offered end-to-end lease management for acquiring and managing storefronts
- Cross-Team Transparency: Fostered transparency and cross-team collaboration within the entire organization.
Product Tour
Take a self-guided tour and see how the fastest-growing commercial tenants leverage Occupier for lease management & lease accounting.
