CHALLENGE
The Essentia Mattress Company’s Director of Real Estate had been given the task of establishing their retail presence in Southern California by the end of 2010. Essentia, at the time, was strictly a Canadian mattress company operating primarily in the cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. In August of that year, Essentia contacted Mr. McEvoy who guided them through the expansion negotiations, construction and build out.
STRATEGY
Morgan McEvoy’s initial conversation with Essentia Mattress related to the marketability and branding of their product. The Essentia Mattress Company manufactures and distributes high end memory foammattresses that are developed using health and environmentally conscious products. Taking this into account, Mr. McEvoy felt it necessary to target markets where the customer base was more health conscious than average, highly educated and had a greater concern for environmental issues. As a result, Santa Monica, Pasadena and Manhattan Beach were selected as the target markets.
SERVICES
McEvoy provided a full spectrum of services to make this requirement possibleincluding: requirement solicitation to the brokerage community, a full market overview and tour selection of the most viable sites and lease negotiations. Mr. McEvoy guided Essentia through the core and shell construction process as well as the tenant improvement process.
RESULTS
In November of 2010 with a grand opening event scheduled in early December, just in time for the holiday season. McEvoy arranged for meetings with contractors and insurance agents since Essentia had not yet developed those relationships in the United States. Representatives from Essentia have since appeared on Oprah to discuss their revolutionary and health conscious product.They have enlisted GLA Retail to help them in the acquisition and development of additional locations throughout Southern California.