A dive into how Symaps builds with Mapbox

Location strategy is crucial in retail, as businesses vie for the ideal spot and optimized distribution points. Every location presents its own traffic dynamics, competition density, and nearby partnership opportunities. Without proper analysis, these complexities can lead to overlooked prospects, business setbacks, and even self-cannibalization.

With advanced location intelligence platforms, businesses can gain in-depth insights into growth, customer reach, and positioning even before choosing where to expand.

One standout in this field is Symaps, a SaaS location intelligence platform that harnesses Mapbox technology to assist businesses with location planning and retail site selection.

For a deeper understanding of location-based decision-making, we sat down with Mickaël Mas, Founder and CEO of Symaps, to discuss the interplay between location data, mapping tech, and business wisdom in determining the 'where' in business success.

Watch the whole webinar here, or read our key insights below.

Introducing Symaps: A new perspective for location insights

Symaps specializes in guiding businesses through pivotal decisions concerning their physical locations with powerful data analysis and visualization tools.

Originating from South Korea and now headquartered in France, Symaps has expanded its presence in 40 countries. Their global reach spans a range of industries from traditional retail to restaurants to electric vehicle charging stations.

By aggregating crucial data like traffic patterns, competitor analysis, and potential partnership opportunities, Symaps provides actionable location insights to expansion managers, business strategists, and small business owners seeking the perfect place to set up shop.

Decoding Symaps: How to power business decisions

In our webinar, Mickaël detailed four key facets of how the Symaps platform supports ROI-driven decisions based on accurate location insights.

Understand

Symaps offers a bird's eye view of urban landscapes, allowing users to zoom into a city and gain a demographic understanding of different neighborhoods or to explore at what times specific establishments, like cafes or gyms, experience the most footfall. 

Rank and Benchmark

Building on this city-wide understanding, Symaps then facilitates a deeper dive. Users can scout potential venues and rank them on multiple parameters using Mapbox Movement Data, such as competitor proximity, and demographic profiles.

This ranking system offers a comparative lens, ensuring that businesses are not only choosing a good location, but the optimized location for their particular needs.

Predict

Leveraging sophisticated predictive models, Symaps offers a glimpse into the future of any given location. Simply by entering an address, businesses can obtain an estimate of potential revenue if they decide to establish there.

Decide

Ultimately, all of Symap’s insights influence decision-making. Instead of basing decisions on intuition or limited data, users can rely on the platform’s comprehensive view of the landscape, ensuring their next move is well-informed. The Symaps platform equips analysts and expansion managers to illustrate the various factors informing decisions in real-time, so other stakeholders can engage with the data, make live modifications to parameters, and feel fully informed in their decisions.

To see these facets working together in action, Mickaël provided live demonstrations.

Symaps in action: Live demos with Mickaël Mas

Our conversation with Mickaël featured a variety of eye-opening demos that highlighted Symap’s specificity, comparative analyses, and ability to crunch large volumes of data. Here’s our top three:

Lyon's foot traffic analysis

Navigating over Lyon, France, Mickaël used Symaps to visualize movement data, spotlighting the busiest city segments during different times of the day or week.

Next, he showcased Symaps’ ability to seamlessly merge data by incorporating restaurant data and demographic insights with foot traffic patterns.

With this integrated approach, Mickaël easily assessed the viability of a potential sushi restaurant in two different locations.

Electric vehicle market analysis in the UK

Mickaël further demonstrated the power of Symaps by exploring the electric vehicle charging station market across the UK. Using the 'Finder' tool, he set the entire United Kingdom as the location, electric vehicle charging stations as the market, and an 8-minute drive as the catchment area to locate where a business should build a new charging station.

Impressively, the search sifted through data from thousands of locations, offering recommendations for potential new stations, complete with insights into traffic, demographics, and nearby competition intensity.

Students and coffee shops

Transitioning to a different market, Mickaël turned his attention to the UK's coffee shops and students who frequent them. He evaluated the reach of three dominant chains—Costa Coffee, Starbucks, and Pret A Manger––focusing on the proximity to the student demographic.

This search revealed that 22 percent of UK’s students are within a five-minute walk of Costa Coffee, and to marginally increase that coverage, Costa Coffee would have to open hundreds of new outlets.

Mickaël explains how this data suggests that Costa Coffee has maximized its efficiency targeted students. However, Symaps still offers Costa Coffee with useful insights, such as which ten locations would make the greatest impact to boosting student coverage.

Symaps embraces Mapbox Movement data

Wrapping up our webinar, Mickaël shed light on the significant role that Mapbox data has in Symaps' functionality. He underscored the need for top-tier data in understanding markets and commended Mapbox for the coverage, quality, and ease-of-use of the Mapbox Movement data. Here's why Mapbox stands out for Symaps:

Accuracy & Global Coverage

Incorporating Mapbox Movement data bolsters Symaps’ global coverage and fine-tunes its accuracy. This integration allows Symaps to overcome limitations from smaller datasets and enhance its pedestrian traffic analysis.

Emphasis on Privacy

Mapbox and Symaps share a commitment to data protection. The robust privacy standards set by Mapbox resonate with Symaps, reinforcing their collaboration in managing sensitive data.

Trust & Reliability

Symaps’ successful endeavors with building with Mapbox maps in the past, the availability of the Mapbox team, and the reliability of Mapbox data in Symaps’ technical evaluations have made for a successful partnership.

Business Intelligence platforms change the game with Mapbox data

Navigating the complex world of location intelligence, Symaps stands out as a game-changer for businesses seeking optimal spots. Through our webinar with CEO Mickaël Mas, we can see how Symaps leverages Mapbox data to transform intricate location details into actionable insights for businesses searching for where to set up shop.

Learn more about how Symaps builds with Mapbox here.