GlobalCrossroadsCapital.com Explains Retail Sector of “12 Market Factors” Forum
Friday, January 25th, 2008Las Vegas, NV — Las Vegas is known world-wide as the entertainment & gaming capital; as well as the boxing, wedding, trade show and emerging investment banking & international trade capital. In 2007, investment flowed into Las Vegas from Canada, Bahamas, South Africa, Israel, Luxembourg and United Arab Emirates to name a few countries.
Valley-wide growth in retail construction and retail distribution hubs include furniture, shoes, and gems & jewelry. There are 3 hotel-casinos on the strip that feature their own shopping mall to include Mandalay Bay, Planet Hollywood and Ceasars Palace; the latter which features a 3-story circular escalator at the entrance. Fashion Show Mall is the only independent mall on the Strip and features actual fashion runway shows.
Developer Triple Five has proposed building the Great Mall of Las Vegas. Triple Five owns the Mall of America in Minneapolis and is under contract to acquire the former 6-acre La Concha Motel on the Strip for $32M per acre. The $7.4B MGM City Center is a retail shopping/residential condo/hotel-casino Strip development on 66-acres.
There are 2 outlet malls on the South Strip and one downtown in the 61-acre Union Park next to the World Market Center. The World Market Center currently has 2 mid-rise towers and eventually will consist of 8 buildings totaling 12M square feet. It currently features high-end wholesale furniture showrooms who’s trade shows have already successfully competed against High Point, North Carolina as the capital of furniture.
Also coming to Union Park will be the 50-story World Jewelry Center. So far, 60 world-wide firms from 16 countries have reserved space. Strategically positioned near the I-15/Hwy 93 interchange; the World Jewelry Center has also received Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) designation from the US Department of Commerce which permits duty-free taxes for items entering the zone that are re-exported and defers payment for items sold in the US.
Major retail shopping-mixed use developments in Las Vegas includes Town Square, which is strategically positioned on the Strip at the I-15/215 interchange. Town Square spans 117-acres and consists of 1.5M square feet. Developer Eighth Wonder of the New York-New York Hotel-Casino is now breaking ground on a retail shopping-mixed used resemblance of New York City’s East Village across from the Thomas & Mack Arena. The 44-acre parcel will consist of 27 buildings and almost 1M square feet at a projected cost of $320M.
In 2006, www.investmentbankingcentral.com reported that local online shoe distributor www.zappos.com received $60M in capital investment.
Zappos has featured large national ads in USA Today. Annual sales have gone from $1.6M in 2000 to almost $600M in 2006. With 1,200 employees, the firm has almost 2M pair of shoes in stock at any time. The national retail shoe market is $40B. The chief executive for Zappos was 24 years old when he sold his first company; an internet advertiser called LinkExchange, to Microsoft for $265M.
This retail sector report is an ongoing contribution to the “12 Market Factors” blog forum discussing where capital infusion is heading to/from in the Las Vegas economy over the next 20 years. This forum is featured on www.GlobalCrossroadsCapital.com; which is an investor relations media communications firm based in Las Vegas that uniquely features a self-serve trade show formatted-push button accessed finance portal that allows visitors to “Deal Direct” with different capital providers. Management is certified by the US Department of Commerce in International Trade; as indicated online: http://www.globalcrossroadscapital.com/admin-resume.php.
Contact:
Jeffrey Allen, CEO
Global Crossroads Capital
Tel: +1 702-369-2621
investorrelations@financier.com
www.globalcrossroadscapital.com
