What Founders Should Pay Attention to at ICSC—Beyond the Deal

ICSC is around the corner, and the energy is exactly what you’d expect—sites, deals, expansion fever, and the particular kind of pressure that makes a marginal location start to look like an opportunity. For emerging brands, it can feel like being dropped into a shark tank. At feeding time.

Here are five things to keep in mind as you navigate those waters.

The Site That Has Everything (Except What You Need)

A site can have ideal demographics, great foot traffic, and serious buzz—but if it can’t support your operations, it’s not great for you. What’s the delivery access? Can it support your queuing? Do the utilities need to be upgraded? Make a list of what your concept needs to run—and to run well. Divide it into must haves and nice-to-haves and run every potential site against it. Only sign the ones that check the right boxes. They’re out there.

Read the Landlord’s Design Criteria Like a Contract—Because It Is One

Founders often skim the landlord’s design criteria without giving it much weight, but few documents more directly impact your CapEx for a given location. This is where you find out whether the landlord expects a standard rollout or a customized flagship approach. Will the tile you’ve used across your previous locations meet their standards—or will you need to upgrade for this one? And can you make that change without triggering brand drift? Read it early, read it carefully, and price it before you sign.

Your Standards Package is About to Get a Stress Test

Any growth—even if you’re rigorous about signing similar sites—will expose which design decisions from your previous stores are well documented and which aren’t. If your standards package is thin enough to staple, leasing ten new sites is going to place serious strain on your delivery pipeline. Make sure the expansion you’re planning is one your team actually has the tools to build. One-off improvisation only works one store at a time.

You Have Stores. Do You Have a System?

At a certain point, the question isn’t how many locations you have—it’s how repeatable they are. If your existing portfolio is mostly inline stores, then continuing to sign inline stores is the fastest path to scale. Mixing formats—end caps, freestanding boxes, suburban shells—introduces variation that slows down design, documentation, and construction. Consistency in format is good strategy.

The Most Expensive Space is One You’re Paying for While it’s Dark

Even a site that checks every box may not be worth it if you’re paying rent while it sits empty. You need to know how long your design team takes to produce drawings, what the full permitting timeline looks like in that jurisdiction, and the number of weeks of your typical build—then balance all of that against the delivery date and rent commencement date on the lease. It’s not simple math but getting it right saves significant pain.

ICSC is full of opportunity—but opportunity alone isn’t the same as fit.

The strongest expansion decisions come from understanding not just where a brand can grow, but where it can grow without distorting what makes it work.

If you’re planning your next location, we help teams evaluate sites through the lens of operations, scalability, and design feasibility—not just availability.