Dottid Launches Retail Leasing and Asset Management Platform: Exclusive

The Dallas-based startup’s retail platform is designed to give asset managers and their leasing teams data, visualizations, and processes specific to retail demand, according to a company statement. 

Dottid Retail is supposed to provide owners and managers with easier access to building data. As retail stores demand more flexible rent terms due to the evolving nature of the asset class — due in no small part to the pandemic’s disruption and e-commerce’s rocket-ship rise — Dottid tracks these details throughout the contract negotiations, including during the tenant’s occupancy, the company statement said.

“We want to enable our customers with the ability to capture as much data about their buildings as possible,” said Kyle Waldrep, Dottid CEO and founder. “It’s really what I call enablement data, because it’s enabling the teams that own these buildings to create better synergy across their transactions, ultimately driving revenue for the owner.”

Dottid’s retail platform and its analytics team mines retail owners’ data to help drive their clients’ business and real estate transactions throughout the leasing cycle, Waldrep said. “That’s what we wanted to set up and that’s what we’ve done, specific to retail with this release.”

Dottid views the retail sector as looking more than ever for innovation and growth to drive the asset class forward after COVID’s impact. A record 12,200 retail stores closed last year, and that trend had been accelerating due to the shift to online commerce.

However, the tech company sees brick-and-mortar retail making a comeback, fueled by a return to the office and school, as well as consumers’ overall desire to get back to in-person dining, shopping, and entertainment. Retail sales were up  0.7 percent monthly in August, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  

Realizing that retail was in a particularly precarious spot entering the pandemic, Dottid started planning its retail platform in the first quarter of 2020, Waldrep said. However, in 2021, “We’ve seen the demand from retail customers go up and really be driven by an increase in retail sales and in retail productivity, consistent with the market coming back as a whole.”

Launched in January 2020, Dottid overall proclaims itself to be the first and only platform to track every moment of a leasing transaction — from managing inventory through offering, negotiation, tenant improvements, and occupancy.

Prior to the launch of Dottid Retail, Dottid Industrial, a custom extension of the original Dottid offering, was introduced earlier this year, designed with new features that the company says will  bring all parties together and drive business value for a high-performing, yet often underserved, asset class.

Philip Russo can be reached at prusso@commercialobserver.com.