Jean BOLATOGLU

About EDS Conseils

EDS Conseils is a commercial real estate consulting firm that supports brands and investors. Our team is made up of three people, each managing a specific area:

• Institutional relations,
• Retail real estate transactions in high streets and shopping centres: network portfolio arbitrage, acquisitions and disposals, lease agreements,
• The development of the brands we represent under mandate: site selection, development plans and legal support.

What are your responsibilities as a retail real estate consultant?

As a retail real estate consultant, my main role is to find the right locations, in the right place and at the right time, for our retail clients.

EDS Conseils works with several brands expanding in high streets or shopping centres, mainly in the personal goods sector. Among our references, I can mention retail networks such as L’Atelier d’Amaya, Le Petit Souk, Rituals, Passage du Désir and Kiko Milano.

Although I generally work with brands or groups in their expansion phase, I also occasionally support e-commerce players wishing to open physical stores.

How do you use the Codata solution?

Codata mainly helps me improve the quality of our presentation files, particularly from a visual perspective. Integrating elements from the Codata database makes our materials look more professional.

When I present a specific location to a brand, it is essential for me to be able to describe the immediate retail environment of the premises being studied and to visualise a broader map of the overall retail offer. Thanks to the solution, I have access to a precise and comprehensive view.

In order to choose the best location, some retailers rely on footfall data, while others prioritise the brand environment, meaning the presence of other retailers in the target area. In both cases, using Codata saves me time because the tool brings together all the data needed to present the retail environment to our clients and qualify footfall.

In addition, Codata is the only solution that allows several footfall flows to be compared around the same location.

Most of our retail projects, meaning brand openings, are located in France. However, I sometimes have to carry out research in French-speaking Belgium, Brussels or Luxembourg. For these occasional assignments, I also use Codata to observe the immediate environment of a given retail location.

The solution offers other features that are useful to me for occasional location searches: the heatmap, which makes it possible to track mobility flows; the owners database; and the retailer directory, which provides direct contact details.

In your opinion, what are the strengths of the Codata solution?

The centralisation of several key features within the same tool is Codata’s main strength. Footfall data, a comprehensive cartographic interface, owners’ names, retailers’ contact details… all these datasets are brought together and made accessible within the Codata Explorer platform, which represents a real time saving.

What is great about Codata is its “all-in-one” approach.