Word: ghermezians
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REST ROOMS Most politicians who leave public life to try to reap millions in the private sector end up at lobbying firms. Mark Ghermezian went into marketing. Three years ago, when running for senior-class president at his high school in Edmonton, Canada, Ghermezian tacked campaign posters over urinals and discovered that this placement could be quite effective. Now 20 and a part-time student at Yeshiva University in New York City, he runs Flush Media, which places full-color print ads in stalls and above urinals. His primary venues are in Canada at places like Calgary International Airport...
...there is competition for stall space. Ghermezian says Flush plans to offer ads on video screens within the next few years, but Zoom Media is already doing so. Zoom places interactive signs and small billboards above sinks and urinals in men's rooms, and on the backs of stall doors in women's rooms. The ads appear in 35 cities in the U.S., mostly in restaurants and bars where they reach customers in the coveted 18-to-34 age group. When Comedy Central was launching its show Crank Yankers last June, it hired Zoom to place...
...Ghermezian approach is indisputably successful. Sales revenues for the complex last year totaled $560 million. That take is the equivalent of $280 per sq. ft. of retail space, which is twice the rate of a typical U.S. retail outlet...
...Ghermezian retailing spectacular is already sprouting a U.S. branch. The brothers will break ground next spring on another consumer kingdom, planned to be twice the size of the West Edmonton Mall, in Bloomington, Minn. The Ghermezians are also encouraging a bidding war for a third development, to be erected near either Toronto or Niagara Falls. Says Brother Nader: "The final choice will depend upon which is most anxious to have us." New York is definitely eager. The state has offered the Ghermezians a free 100-acre site for the project just 200 yds. from the falls, a low-interest...
Shrewd negotiating tactics are a familiar part of the Ghermezian success story. The family gained a North American toehold when Patriarch Jacob Ghermezian, now 86, moved to Montreal from Tehran in 1959. The family began selling Oriental rugs door to door, then opened a Montreal retail outlet, which within five years blossomed into a chain of 17 stores. The leap to real estate came in the 1960s, when the Ghermezians began snapping up land in Edmonton for as little as $100 an acre while the oil boom got under way and later sold some of the property...