E-tailers are set to open about 850 stores in the U.S. over the next five years, according to JLL projections. And venture-capital firm Fifth Wall Ventures has launched a dedicated fund to help some of them do it.
Fifth Wall Ventures, owned partly by CBRE, Hines, Lowe's and Macerich, among other limited partners, seeks to raise some $200 million through the retail fund, reports CNBC. The firm had raised about $64.5 million as of November. It has invested in the likes of diversified-goods delivery platform Foxtrot, skin-care company Heyday, furniture brand Interior Define, hair-salon chain Madison Reed, footwear brand Taft and shirt retailer Untuckit.
Fifth Wall Ventures has helped skin-care brand Heyday open stores
"Eighty-five percent of commerce is still happening offline," said Dan Wenhold, a Fifth Wall executive who headed retail at men's brand Black Tux, speaking to CNBC. "The majority of customers still shop offline. Brands have to go offline."
Furniture brand Interior Define is using Fifth Wall Ventures backing to open stores
Mall landlords are only too eager to welcome these brands into spaces vacated by shrinking or bankrupt retailers such as Sears or Payless ShoeSource.
"In retail, there's a sea of change happening, where retail landlords are being exposed to the demise of bad brick-and-mortar retail," said Brendan Wallace, a Fifth Wall co-founder, as reported by CNBC. "There really isn't a fund that's expressly and explicitly focused on helping brands and technologies that are very young [to] expand into brick-and-mortar."
By Edmund Mander
Director, Editor-In-Chief/SCT
