Tanger’s Justin Stein On Leveraging Data and Gnoshes to Grow a Retail Portfolio

Tanger is riding retail’s comeback and its own portfolio reset.

The Greensboro, N.C.-based real estate investment trust owns and operates 41 open-air outlet and lifestyle centers with more than 16 million square feet and more than 3,000 stores. In the first quarter of 2026, Tanger reported 97 percent occupancy and 3.4 million square feet of leases executed over the trailing 12 months.

The company also increased its 2026 guidance after record leasing volume and retailer demand for space.

Commercial Observer caught up with Justin Stein, executive vice president and chief revenue officer at Tanger, at ICSC Las Vegas to discuss brands planning years ahead, how Tanger is shifting beyond traditional outlet shopping, and why food, beverage and entertainment are becoming a larger part of the company’s strategy.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Commercial Observer: We’re here on the final day of ICSC. How is this year going for Tanger so far?

Justin Stein: Tanger is off to a great start. We just reported our first-quarter earnings a few weeks ago, and we’re really excited not only about how the year started, but also how we ended 2025. 

Our sales are up, our traffic is up, and all of the meetings at ICSC — we’ve probably had about 140 unique tenants come through our booth over the last few days.

What was your main focus at this year’s ICSC?

New business. 

We didn’t want to use this time to discuss renewals with brands. It was primarily about what new opportunities we can add throughout the 41 centers that we own and operate around the country.

The team is energized. What we’ve heard has been encouraging, and we’re talking to brands that are looking for real estate two, three, even four years out. They want to be patient and find the right space. 

What do you think is driving the mounting optimism here?

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there hasn’t been a lot of new supply added around the country. When you don’t have a lot of new supply, but brands still want to continue scaling their business, they start to enter markets they historically may not have considered.

So they’re looking for opportunities in markets where we have centers — places like Huntsville, Ala., Little Rock, Ark., and other communities. We’re seeing a lot of renewed interest in those markets because the lack of new supply is much more pronounced there.

Are you looking into new markets that you typically weren’t targeting before?

Yes, absolutely. There’s no doubt, and no secret, that we’re in growth mode at Tanger. 

There are different ways to grow and scale your business. You can grow organically through your existing properties by addressing expirations and increasing rents at expiration. You can grow through ground-up development, which we did a few years ago when we built in Nashville from the ground up and opened in 2023. And you can grow through acquisitions.

Over the past four or five years — between renovations, external growth and ground-up development — we’ve probably invested close to $1 billion in our fleet. Tenants love the acquisitions we’ve made. They love the Tanger flag when we come into a market because they know we know how to lease, how to market, and how to operate those centers as well as, if not better than, anybody else.

We’re really excited about continuing our external growth, and we’re evaluating properties on a daily basis.

You mentioned that traffic is up at your locations. Are there any specific factors you’d point to that are bringing more shoppers to your centers?

We have a very detailed and sophisticated leasing strategy at each one of our centers. We’re hyper-focused on merchandising and getting the right mix that aligns with what local consumers want.

We’ve also added a lot of food, beverage and entertainment across our portfolio over the last several years. When you add full-service sit-down restaurants, quick-service restaurants or snack options, that draws people to the site and extends dwell time. And we know that when people stay longer, they spend more.

We’re also rightsizing brands in our portfolio. If a brand is operating at, say, 8,000 square feet, we may downsize or rightsize them to 4,500 square feet while they’re doing the same gross sales. That makes them more efficient: Their sales per square foot go up, productivity improves, and they may need fewer employees to run the store, so the store becomes more profitable.

So, between the enhanced food, beverage and entertainment offerings, rightsizing brands, and bringing in new brands that historically haven’t been in our portfolio, all of those are key factors behind why we’re seeing higher sales and more traffic.

It sounds like your tenant mix has shifted. You were around 80 percent footwear and apparel, and now it’s closer to 70 percent. Is that right?

That’s correct, and it was intentional. Through a deliberate, almost surgical re-merchandising effort — adding different categories to our portfolio — we’ve diversified in a meaningful way.

We’ve talked about food, beverage and entertainment, but we’ve also leaned into home and lifestyle categories: brands like Restoration Hardware, Crate & Barrel, Williams Sonoma, Pottery Barn and others. 

Health and wellness is another category. For example, we added Planet Fitness at our property in Savannah.

All of that has helped us diversify, and, as you mentioned, today we’re closer to about 70 percent footwear and apparel.

That’s a meaningful change in a relatively short period. 

What goes into the decision-making process when you’re determining whether a center should remain outlet-focused versus evolving into something more community-oriented?

We’re very data-driven as a team, and rely heavily on insights and analytics to help drive our leasing decisions. We put all of that together and then go to brands and say, “This is what the community wants, and here’s why you should be in this center.”

The brands then run that through their own data and analytics, and that’s what helps us put deals together. At the end of the day, brands are very diligent about researching a market. We rely on that process, and I think that’s a big reason we’ve been so successful over the last few years.

What are your expectations for the second half of the year and as you look ahead to 2027?

As we sit here at the end of May, we’re pretty far along with renewals that expire in 2026. We still have a handful of renewals to address, but as I said earlier, our primary focus is on new business and on replacing underperforming or under-represented tenants.

I think we’re going to see a lot of new brands opening — not only in our portfolio, but across the country — over the balance of 2026. And you’re really going to see new brands, in partnership with Tanger, penetrate our portfolio in a meaningful way in 2027 and 2028.

We’re very optimistic and very bullish about our business. This was a very encouraging ICSC — probably one of the most productive we’ve had in a long time. Brands want to be part of this portfolio because of how we operate, how we market, and how we navigate the business.

Gregory Cornfield can be reached at gcornfield@commercialobserver.com.