Frequently asked questions

Retail site selection is the process of deciding where to open new store locations. In practice it moves through three stages: screening markets (which metro areas deserve attention at all), evaluating trade areas and neighborhoods (which parts of those markets fit the concept), and site-specific diligence on individual properties (rents, zoning, co-tenancy, visibility, access). LookAlike works at the first two stages: it screens 383 US metro markets and ranks all 83,008 US neighborhoods by resemblance to the places where a brand already operates. Site-specific diligence stays with your team.

Start from evidence you already have: the neighborhoods around your existing successful stores describe the conditions your concept thrives in. Then compare candidate neighborhoods against that profile across three groups of characteristics: demographics (income, home values, rents, education, age, household composition), density and urban form (population density, renter share, commute mode, vehicle access), and retail context (the density of nearby grocery stores, restaurants, cafés, and shopping). LookAlike automates exactly this comparison, describing every US neighborhood with 21 open-data features and showing a per-feature explanation for every candidate it ranks.

Open data. Neighborhood characteristics come from US Census American Community Survey data at the census-tract level, plus map-derived retail context such as the density of points of interest, grocery stores, restaurants, cafés, and shopping. Store locations for built-in brands come from public sources, and coverage varies by chain; the app states a coverage caveat wherever it applies. You can also upload your own store list, which stays in your private workspace.

No, and it says so inside the app and on every export. LookAlike measures neighborhood resemblance: how much a candidate neighborhood looks like the neighborhoods where a brand already operates. Demographic resemblance explains only a modest share of store performance, which is why LookAlike positions itself as discovery and triage rather than prediction. Tools that promise revenue forecasts from analog matching are claiming a precision the data does not support.

An analog model (also called a lookalike model) is a long-standing retail technique: profile the locations where a concept already succeeds, then search for places that resemble them. LookAlike is a transparent, national-scale implementation of that idea. It clusters a brand's occupied neighborhoods into up to three store types, builds an archetype for each, and scores every US neighborhood by weighted distance to the nearest archetype, with every weight visible and adjustable. See the method for the full walkthrough.

A demographics report describes one place you already picked. LookAlike ranks every neighborhood in the country against your footprint, so you start from a national shortlist instead of checking places one at a time. And every score explains itself: a similarity percentile, an absolute fit band, a per-feature fingerprint against your brand's archetype, 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. You can 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 and can be reloaded without re-uploading.

Yes. Compare puts two brands on one diverging map and shows which brand each neighborhood leans toward, with three rankings: leans you, resembles both, leans them. It works between two built-in brands or between a built-in brand and your own uploaded footprint, which makes it useful for sizing contested ground against a competitor.

Teams that put pins in maps for a living: retail and restaurant expansion teams deciding which market comes next, franchise development teams showing candidates territories that look like proven ones, and commercial real estate brokers and tenant reps who need a defensible market screen for a client pitch.

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.

LookAlike is in a closed beta with a small number of retail and commercial real estate teams. Request access with your work email and we will reach out as seats open. Beta teams get direct input on the roadmap.