San Jose: Power Market

by Emily Lambert

The Place to Be

When Dionne Warwick belted out her hit, "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" back in 1968, it was a whole different town. Back then San Jose's population was less than a quarter-million, compared to nearly a million today. Now called "The heart of Silicon Valley," San Jose is home to hundreds of thousands of affluent residents, many who work for global players in the tech industry, including Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Apple, Cisco, Adobe, eBay and Sun Microsystems. In fact, tech firms are the city's largest employer, with 300,000 people employed in more than 6,000 tech companies in the area.

For shopper demographics, it doesn't get much better than San Jose. Residents have the highest household income in the country according to the US Census, and they're a highly educated group (more than half of resident adults hold at least a college degree). They're a culturally diverse crowd as well: 33 percent White, 32 percent Hispanic and 28 percent Asian or Pacific Islander.

Shopping centers in the area are as varied as they are numerous, from super-regional enclosed malls with hundreds of stores, to pedestrian-only open-air lifestyle centers designed with a European flair. Located 50 miles south of San Francisco, San Jose is surrounded by mountains on three sides, protecting residents from the rain and fog that San Francisco often experiences, and delivering an average of 300 sunny days per year.

Last but not least, this is trend-forward California we're talking about. For retailers who want to test a product or launch a new concept, there is no better place to gauge consumer interest than The Golden State. "Nothing else sets a trend quite like California," says Gala Langdon, group vice president of business development for General Growth Properties in Riverside, CA.

Are you ready to start a trend? Take a look at the area's dynamic centers, starting in San Jose proper, and get ready for your concept to take off.