EP088 - PwC Partners Steven Barr and Byron Carlock Steve Barr (@Steven_J_Barr) is a partner in the Consumer Markets practice at PwC, and sits on the NRF Board of Trustees.  Byron Carlock is a partner who leads the Real Estate practice at PwC.  We sat down with Steve and Byron to talk about the current state of the US retail market and what the future may look like. In this interview, we discuss, Mallageddon, Omnichannel, Grocery, Mobile, and of course Amazon. PwC Consumer Markets Homepage PwC Real Estate Homepage Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 88 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, June 15, 2017. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.   New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason:  [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode is being recorded on Thursday June 15th 2017 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your Cohoes Scot Wingo. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [0:39] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason is got show listeners, Jason tonight we have two guests on the show that are going to help us better understand some of the retail and real estate dynamics that we've been talking about here in 2017 first we have Steve bar Steve is an over 20 year veteran of pricewaterhousecoopers which I'll call PWC from here on out, where he is focused on the consumer Market Steve is a frequent for contributor on topics around retail Brands and cpg he's also on the Board of Trustees for an RF, we also have Byron Carlock and he is the national partner and real estate practice leader with PWC and Works close to the Steve to understand physical retail Trends and how they impact commercial real estate industry he's been at PWC since 2012 welcome Steve and Byron. [1:28] Thank you John long long time listener first-time caller. Jason:  [1:34] We are excited to have you guys on the show and we always like to get things started by giving a listeners a little bit of a perspective about your backgrounds and how you came into your rolls so maybe Steve we can start with you you want to tell us how you got here. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [1:49] Yeah it's good it's really great to be with you so I leave the consumer markets practice at pricewaterhousecoopers which includes our retail practice are consumer packaged Goods practice. And our travel and tours and practice. The practice includes our advisory Consulting business and our traditional audit and tax practice I've spent my entire career focused primarily in the retail and consumer space and like I said I'm glad to be with you tonight. Jason:  [2:18] Traffic in Byron. Scot, Steve, And Byron:  [2:20] Sure and I'm on Byron Carlock I leave the national real estate practice I came to the firm from industry five years ago. And spent the first half of my career with the Trammell Crow family a prominent real estate family based in Texas with many companies in the various. Real estate categories of office retail multifamily. Hospitality industrial and then I ran three routes for a sponsor before coming to the farm. I also lead the practice across our lines of Services of. Assurance tax and advisory my jobs almost as fun as Steve's but I'm more the dirt guy and so I'm watching our industry go through an interesting metamorphosis especially in the retail category. [3:10] Awesome well as the the dirt guy Byron let me kick it off to you and you know so 2017 is you've been an issue for a while and I've got a majun this is kind of, what is the most brutal years you seen us as relates to Store retail you seen over 5000 stores announced that are closing this year we've had folks on the podcast that say we can get to 100