ICSC 2025 Recap: The Data Arms Race Is On

ICSC 2025 Recap: The Data Arms Race Is On

The most recent ICSC conference in Las Vegas brought together thousands of leaders across retail, commercial real estate, and technology. The conversations this year centered on a few key questions: How do we grow intelligently, build resilience, and better understand consumers at the local level?

We joined the event to connect with customers, partners, and innovators who are reshaping the future of physical retail and real estate. 

Key Takeaways from ICSC 2025

1. Growth is happening, but with more focus

Retailers are expanding again, but with a much more strategic mindset. Growth plans now revolve around optimizing portfolios, analyzing market potential, and making decisions backed by data. This includes knowing which stores to invest in, which markets to enter, and how to manage risk along the way.

2. Experience is the new anchor tenant

Retail is no longer just about convenience. Brands are doubling down on creating experiences that drive loyalty and foot traffic. Whether it’s in-store events, new service models, or destination retail, understanding how people interact with physical spaces is critical.

3. Real estate is becoming more creative and flexible

Landlords, brokers, and developers are increasingly looking at adaptive reuse and non-traditional tenants. Vacant big-box stores are being transformed into health clinics, co-working hubs, and entertainment venues. Flexibility and creativity are top of mind.

4. Everyone is exploring AI, but it starts with clean data

AI was a recurring theme at ICSC (not surprisingly), but one message stood out. Without clean, normalized data, even the most advanced AI tools will fall short. Whether it’s powering internal analytics or external platforms, data quality is everything.

How SafeGraph Supports Retail and Real Estate Leaders

If there was one unifying theme at ICSC this year, it was the need for clarity about the market, the customer, and the environment around each store. SafeGraph provides that clarity by delivering granular, reliable data on physical places, how people interact with them, and what’s changing on the ground.

Whether you’re opening your 5th location or optimizing your 500th, SafeGraph can help:

• Validate site selection decisions with rich Places data, including accurate POI attributes like brand affiliation, category, NAICS code, open hours, and spatial hierarchy. You can confidently assess what’s actually present at a location — not just what’s on paper.
• Analyze competitive landscapes with precise POI metadata and spatial geometry. Understand nearby brand presence, retail saturation, and business mix to identify underserved areas or high-density competitors.
• Understand how local context impacts performance, from co-tenancy insights to proximity analysis. Use the data to evaluate what surrounds each potential location — whether it’s complementary businesses, anchors, or points of friction.
• Fuel predictive models with clean, machine-readable data, including persistent, normalized schemas, and accurate POIs across millions of locations in the US and globally. 

Let’s keep the conversation going

We left ICSC energized by the momentum in this space and the openness to smarter, data-first decision-making. If you're interested in learning how SafeGraph can support your team, we’d love to connect.

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