Businesses that don’t make any money… on purpose!

This was a totally foreign concept to me until I moved to New York City. It turns out that there are a number of stores in NY that make no profit. Meaning, the store only exists in a certain location to serve as a giant functioning advertisement. Do you think the Walgreens or Starbucks in Times Square sell enough merchandise and lattes to pay rent? Of course not – the corporation foots the bill due to the value of advertising on such prime real estate. Who would have guessed?! Now there is a UniQlo store opening up on 5th Ave at a price of.. wait.. $300Million! (as a side note, the fact that UniQlo is popping up all over NYC is weird to me anyway. It’s a Japanese store and I used to shop there in Japan. Over there its kind of like Old Navy. Here the prices are still pretty low, but it seems to be much more hip).

http://consumerist.com/2010/04/uniqlo-paying-record-300-million-for-fifth-avenue-spot.html

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