Practical guidance on US retail rollouts.
Cost benchmarks. Permit timelines. Work-letter negotiation. GC selection criteria. Written for the Director of Store Development reading three articles before issuing an RFP.
The US retail buildout playbook for international brands
A lease-to-opening checklist for brands opening their first US stores. Covers permitting by market, work-letter review, MEP and millwork translation, GC selection, schedule of values and a 90-day pre-opening runbook.
How long do retail permits take in the top 10 US markets?
A market-by-market table of typical retail TI permit timelines — NYC, LA, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle. With the filing types that matter and the failure modes that blow the schedule.
What does a US retail buildout actually cost in 2026?
Range-based benchmarks for specialty retail buildouts at $500K to $2M per store. National averages, market premiums for NYC and LA, what drives the spread, and what the published surveys leave out.
How to negotiate a US retail work letter when your home market is somewhere else
What a US landlord work letter actually does, where international tenants typically lose money, the soft-cost clauses that should never be missed, and how TI allowance maths really works.
New work goes up weekly.
Our standing cadence is one substantive article a week plus one FAQ entry targeting a single literal buyer question — “How much TI allowance should I ask for in a Miami specialty retail lease?”, “What does a typical schedule of values look like for a $1M retail TI?” and so on.