Then I took this job. The unique thing about ICIC is it's the best leverage of my experience and my education. A lot of the work I do is around inner-city retailing. By inner city we mean the distressed areas, areas with poverty, unemployment and a lower standard of living in general. There's a huge number of people being deprived of retailing.
Many retailers view the inner city as dangerous, unsafe, as an area of distress.
We try to flip their perception on its head and say, Granted, there are those types of things that exist in inner-city areas, but there's a huge amount of population density, so there's a huge income that can be tapped. There's a huge supply-demand imbalance. At the Walnut Street Thriftway on a Saturday afternoon, the lines are like out the door. Obviously people are spending money there, but retailers have a mental block. I also spend a lot of time understanding the inner-city shopper.