Frequently asked questions

Retail site selection is the process of deciding where to open new store locations. It screens markets to find metro areas worth considering, evaluates trade areas and neighborhoods for concept fit, and then runs site-specific diligence on individual properties. LookAlike supports the first two stages by screening 383 US metros and ranking all 83,008 US neighborhoods by resemblance to where a brand already operates.

Use the neighborhoods around your existing successful stores as evidence of where your concept thrives, then compare candidates across demographics, density and urban form, and retail context. LookAlike runs that comparison for every US neighborhood on 21 open-data features and gives a per-feature explanation for each ranked candidate.

LookAlike uses open public data covering residents, workers, access, and the businesses around a site, assembled for every US neighborhood. There is no data subscription to sign. Store locations for built-in brands come from public sources, coverage varies by chain with a caveat where it applies, and you can upload your own store list, which stays in your private workspace.

It does something more useful up front: it ranks and explains the neighborhoods that most resemble where your brand already works, so your team knows where to look first and why. Use it to focus the search before deeper diligence.

An analog model, also called a lookalike model, profiles the locations where a concept already succeeds and searches for places that resemble them. LookAlike applies this at national scale: it clusters a brand's occupied neighborhoods into up to three store types, builds an archetype for each, and scores every US neighborhood by distance to the nearest archetype while keeping every weight visible. The method page has the full walkthrough.

A demographics report describes one place you have already selected. LookAlike compares your footprint with every neighborhood in the country and produces a national shortlist before you inspect places one at a time. Each score carries a similarity percentile, an absolute fit band, a per-feature fingerprint, a robustness check, and a reliability flag on noisy estimates.

Yes. Upload a CSV of your locations and rank the whole country against your real footprint. Add a performance column to weight the archetype toward your best stores, or flag closed and underperforming locations so scoring becomes resemblance-to-winners minus resemblance-to-failures. Uploads become versioned datasets in your private workspace.

Yes. Compare places two brands on one diverging map and groups neighborhoods into three: stronger resemblance to your brand, resemblance to both, or stronger resemblance to the other. You can compare two built-in brands or a built-in brand with your own uploaded footprint.

Yes. Uploaded store lists live in your private workspace, are not shared with other customers, and are used only to score your own brand. You can export or delete your data at any time.

Yes. LookAlike can be white-labeled and resold to your own clients. Get in touch through the teams page and we will set up an arrangement that fits.

LookAlike is a paid single-seat plan at $100 per month, or $960 per year. You subscribe on the pricing page, then create your account and load your first brand. For several seats or an agency workspace, get in touch through the teams page.