New York to North Jersey

New York, New York. If retailers can make it there,Welcome to Find the right laser Engraver or laser marking machine . odds are good they'll also open stores here. And lately the odds are improving.

The flow of stores from Manhattan to North Jersey slowed during the recession, but the pace is picking up again.View our range of over 200 different types of solar powered products including our solar street lamps. Tiffany & Co. is scheduled to open its second Bergen County store, at Westfield Garden State Plaza, this summer. The mall is also adding space for 20 stores it hopes to fill with New York City premium designer brands, like as Dolce & Gabbana.

Last year, when the giant Japanese retailer Uniqlo was looking for a suburban site for its first U.S. store outside New York City, it picked Paramus.

The retail fortunes of North Jersey and New York City have been linked since the first Bergen County malls opened in 1957. In recent years, North Jersey has benefited from New York City's dominance as the place for international brands to establish a U.S. foothold. When those brands decide to add suburban stores, North Jersey usually is their first choice.

"For retailers in New York, it really is New Jersey and you, perfect together," said Faith Hope Consolo, a New York power broker and head of the retail division at Prudential Douglas Elliman. A Manhattan store shows you can make it in the big city. And when you want to show you can play in suburbia's big leagues, you come to North Jersey, particularly Paramus, Consolo and other retail real estate brokers say.

Consolo said Manhattan-based retailers that want to branch out into a nearby suburb have four choices — New Jersey; Westchester County and Long Island in New York; and Connecticut. In her opinion, New Jersey beats those other locations.

"It's easy access, you have some of the best malls in the country," she said. Eventually, national chains will usually end up with stores in all those locations, but North Jersey often wins the contest for the first suburban location because it is considered a better test market.

"Bergen County really gives you such a good cross-section of socio economic categories and gives you a very big variety of consumers," Consolo said. "It lets you tap a market that's residential, commercial and even tourist."

The first New York retailers came to northern New Jersey because of its proximity to New York. The parent company of Macy's developed Garden State Plaza in the 1950s, expecting that most of its shoppers would be New Yorkers from Washington Heights and the Bronx who could get to Paramus quicker than to midtown because of the George Washington Bridge and Route 4.

But the bridge and Route 4 also led to the development of North Jersey suburbs filled with North Jersey shoppers. Now, the retailers come for the people — a population of 1.4 million in Bergen and Passaic counties that makes North Jersey the size of the country's sixth-largest city, Phoenix, and bigger than Dallas and Detroit — and the kind of demographics merchants drool over — average household income of $105,864 and median household income of $72,588. That's 7 percent higher than the New Jersey median and 43 percent above the U.S. median.

Consolo said retailers want to be in Manhattan "because if they want to expand, Manhattan buys us the rest of the country." Landlords in other cities know you mean business and can survive if you have a store in Manhattan, she said. "Why? Because they know how competitive New York is. We're a tough town," she said.

Likewise, the Paramus-based broker Chuck Lanyard, president of the Goldstein Group, said a Paramus location sends the same message to suburban landlords.

"It says you're serious about picking a really high-quality town in a prime retail market place.The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. And when you do future stores, it helps with your credibility," he said.

A Manhattan flagship,Provides more protection than regular Safety goggles. Consolo said, is not for the weak or the undercapitalized. But for retailers looking to go public or launch a major expansion, it is the best place for visibility.

They're not tracking changes in the euro or US dollar. As the International Energy Agency in Paris points out, you'd expect the growing spare capacity in the OPEC countries to drive down Brent oil prices. But that is not happening.

Copenhagen-based Danske Bank on Friday shot out a note which makes an interesting point about OPEC and its seeming ability to crank up production if needed. Political unrest in Africa has led oil companies to review security arrangements in countries such as Libya, Algeria and Nigeria, thus halting production.

"This has acted to increase spare capacity but should hardly be seen as bearish for oil," says Danske senior analyst Christin Tuxen. And he says the geopolitical factor has returned with a vengeance after talks broke down between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency; this just raises the risk of Israel losing patience with its long-time foe.

In the near term, Tuxen expects Brent prices to be well supported but there could be a correction at any time due to the build-up of speculative positioning.

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