What I Learned About Retail Launching a Brokerage During the Height of the Pandemic

A year ago, as COVID-19 gripped New York City, I did the unthinkable: I launched a retail brokerage.

To many of my colleagues, commercial real estate—and retail in particular—seemed all but dead. When the pandemic shut down the city and most brokers retreated upstate, I stayed in the city with my boots on the ground, searching for opportunities to creatively engage with landlords and tenants. And through that experience and against that backdrop, I saw tremendous potential for the sector and the city’s shared renaissance. 

MONA, short for “Making Of A New Age,” launched from my steadfast belief in the future of New York City’s retail and restaurant scene. You might call me an eternal optimist or just incredibly bullish (or maybe both), but I believed then—as I do now—that a shift is upon us, and that this change will ultimately make the city better and stronger.

In the year or two leading up to the pandemic, the amount of vacant retail space you’d see walking the streets of our retail corridors even then was staggering. And that proved to me that the ways of old were (and are) simply not working for retail tenants or landlords. I realized that as the professionals tasked with the responsibility of filling the streets of New York with stores, restaurants, gyms, and experiential concepts, we just weren’t doing our job well.

This is a radical thing for a guy in brokerage to say. But there are so many reasons why this is true. To start, the traditional brokerage model is simply not structured well to service the needs of both retail landlords and tenants appropriately. To the contrary, they’re structured with a focus on large deal types like investment sales or office leasing. When you’re representing retailers, it’s a much more nuanced, bespoke process. It’s critical to have data aggregation tools and an innate understanding of what the customer and end user wants and needs in their neighborhood so you can shape concepts that really meet a need. And to that end, for NYC retail to not only survive but thrive, brokers like me have to elicit information from those people in the communities we’re serving. We have to actually listen.

That fundamental belief is what has guided the MONA team, which now includes five brokers, through the last year. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished in a year that will certainly live in infamy. And I’m confident that New York City’s best retail days are ahead of us. There will be a new age—and I’m grateful to have a front-row seat.

Brandon Singer is chief executive officer of retail advisory and brokerage firm MONA.