Indonesia’s general trade (GT) network is enormous. Roughly 3.9 million traditional outlets, warungs, toko kelontong, and small kiosks, are scattered across the archipelago (Euromonitor International, 2022, as cited by Indonesia’s Ministry of Trade), and together they still account for around 69 percent of  Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sales...

Indonesia’s minimarket chains have been on a growth tear. Indomaret alone reported more than 23,000 stores nationwide by 2024, and Alfamart wasn’t far behind at roughly 20,000, with both chains growing at double digit rates over the past five years. On paper, that looks like a...

Most ATM placement decisions still come down to gut feeling. A retail team sees a busy street corner, assumes foot traffic is high, and signs the lease. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn’t, and the machine sits underused for years while the lease...

BSD City looks like a retailer’s dream. Roughly 6,000 hectares of planned township in South Tangerang. A population of 450.000 (BPS, Tangerang Selatan, 2024) across the city and growing. Five toll gates, three commuter rail stations, and new residential clusters opening almost every year.  Yet retail coverage across...

Indonesia’s affordable drinks and dessert segment is going through its most aggressive growth phase in over a decade. New outlets open almost every month, most of them targeting students with products priced under Rp10,000. But behind this fast-paced expansion lies a question many business...

A busy street does not always mean a busy store. Plenty of retailers have opened on a road packed with pedestrians, only to find that almost none of that traffic ever walks through the door.  This is the gap that...

A new store opens with a ribbon-cutting and a line out the door. Eighteen months later, the same unit sits empty, the lease is gone, and the fit-out budget never came back.  This pattern shows up across the retail industry more often than...

Picture two scenarios. In the first, a retailer finds the perfect site, except a direct competitor is already operating two doors down. In the second, a retailer finds an empty stretch of road with zero competitors nearby. Which one is the safer bet?  Most...

You pull up a heatmap of your store’s surroundings. It’s full of color: deep red blobs here, faint yellow patches there, a gradient that looks impressive in a slide deck. But what is it actually telling you? And more importantly, what should you do...