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White space analysis
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United States
White space analysis for US retail expansion
See where people already go, how far they travel, and where your stores and competitor brands don't reach. Get a free white space analysis for one US city.
Get a free analysis of your locations
Up to 5 locations. No cost, no commitment.
We handle your details in line with the CCPA and applicable US state privacy laws.
White space analysis finds the places where demand for your brand exists but no store of yours, or of a close competitor, serves it yet. Huq gives you the evidence behind that map: weekly foot traffic, where visitors come from, drive times, and the POIs and brand locations already in each area. You see gaps in how people actually move, not just empty spots on a map, before you commit to a site.
See how white space analysis works in Huq
The video is a short overview of the Huq platform. Watch the Explore map layers, including travel time, brand locations and industries, and how foot traffic appears for any area you draw. For white space analysis, use the same steps to lay your store catchments over demand and spot busy areas that neither you nor a rival serves yet.
- Drive time layer: see the areas each of your stores reaches within a set travel time, and what sits outside them.
- POIs and brand locations: map competitors and complementary brands to tell an open gap from one a rival already serves.
- Foot traffic density: see where activity concentrates across a city and whether it holds week after week.
Trusted by 300+ organisations · Data across 35 markets
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What is white space analysis?
In retail, white space analysis is the search for underserved areas: places with enough of the right activity to support a store, where neither you nor your competitors trade yet. It usually comes before site selection. First you find the gaps, then you shortlist sites inside them.
The most common mistake is confusing a lack of stores with a lack of demand. Some areas are empty because few people go there. White space mapping works best when it starts from where people actually go and where they travel from, set against the reach of your stores and your competitors. In Huq, drive time, POI and brand location layers sit on the same Explore map as foot traffic.
The term is also used in sales and product strategy for gaps in accounts or product ranges. This page is about retail locations: where your next store should go.
What's in your white space analysis
01
Pedestrian flow maps
Huq's White Space Analysis tool maps pedestrian flow across city grids, showing peak hours and the paths people use habitually.
02
Catchment gaps vs your stores
Drive time and catchment for your existing stores, showing the busy areas none of them currently draw from.
03
Competitor presence
Map competitor brand locations and nearby POIs, then measure their foot traffic to see which gaps are still open.
04
Weekly foot traffic trends
Check whether activity in a gap is steady, seasonal or growing, with weekly visit data.
What a white space analysis shows
A sample from a free analysis for one US city. Your version uses your own stores, your competitors and the areas you are considering.
01
Pedestrian flow across the city grid by time of day
The busiest streets at each time of day. Habitual routes show up as consistent bands of activity week after week, rather than one-off spikes.
02
Your store catchments set against demand
Shaded areas show where your current visitors come from. Busy areas outside every shaded zone are your white space candidates.
03
Competitor coverage in each gap
Competitor brand locations and their foot traffic show whether a gap is genuinely open or already served by a rival.
White space mapping across the US
Huq covers any address in the United States: shopping centers, main streets, downtowns, strip malls, competitors' stores and sites you haven't opened yet. No counters, sensors or cameras needed.
Huq manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each of its 35 markets twice a year, and data refreshes weekly.
How it works
Step 1
Tell us your locations
Add up to five addresses in the form. Your own stores, candidate sites or competitors.
Step 2
We run the analysis
Our team maps each location from observed visitor data.
Step 3
We walk you through it
A short call to take you through what the data shows and what it means for you.
Why retail teams use Huq to find white space
- Huq publishes its accuracy by country: a 19.5% median error across published markets, against a 30% healthy threshold.
- Huq's customers give it an NPS of 42.
- Trusted by 300+ organizations across 35 markets, including the global insights, research and location intelligence teams at Nike, Adidas, JD Sports and Samsung.
huq's platform gave us valuable data to support a key decision on potential new sites.
Dan Brogden
National Sales Manager, Puccinos
Who it's for
01
Retail chains of any size
From five-store retailers planning their next site to national brands: choose locations, track store performance and benchmark against competitors.
02
Retail real estate owners
Show shopping center performance, support leasing and get the tenant mix right, for landlords, asset managers and brokers.
03
Investors and private equity
Check how retail brands and assets actually perform before you buy, and monitor them after.
Everything Huq measures, in one platform
- Foot traffic: by week, month and year, with totals, average daily foot traffic, trends, period-over-period change, and visiting vs passing traffic.
- Residents and visitors.
- Trade area and travel time: trade areas by ZIP code, plus drive-time and travel-time analysis.
- Demographics and profiling: age, gender and purchasing power, available in selected markets.
- Behavior: visit frequency, dwell time, time of day and dayparts, cross-visitation between up to 10 location pairs, and international visitation for tourism.
- Foot traffic density and transportation mode.
- Places, brands and industries: points of interest, brand locations and brand analysis, industry performance, shopping center and retail center types.
- Geo-spend: spend by volume and category, available in selected markets.
- Tools: the Explore map (draw any area or use layers for travel time, trade areas, shopping centers, retail centers, brand locations, industries and ZIP codes), White Space Analysis, and Projects for monitoring many locations and reporting to stakeholders.
- Delivery: the platform, CSV or Excel exports, monthly PDF location reports, and data feeds as Parquet and CSV files into Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage buckets.
- Cadence: data refreshes weekly.
Frequently asked questions
What is white space analysis?
In retail, it's the search for areas with enough demand to support a store where neither you nor your competitors trade yet. It comes before site selection: it tells you which areas to look in, and site selection picks the property. The term also appears in sales and product strategy, where it means gaps in accounts or product ranges.
Is white space analysis the same as void analysis?
They are close relatives. Void analysis usually lists which brands or categories are missing from a specific center or trade area. A white space study looks wider, at which parts of a market are underserved by your brand and your competitors. Huq's foot traffic and visitor origin data support both.
How do you do a white space analysis?
Map demand, then map supply. For demand, Huq shows weekly foot traffic, peak hours, foot traffic density and where visitors come from. For supply, use the brand location and POI layers, and drive times around your stores and competitors, to see where existing reach stops. Busy areas outside every catchment are your candidates. Check them over several months.
What's included in the free white space map?
We map pedestrian flow for one US city and set it against your store locations and your main competitors. You get a short report showing busy areas, catchment gaps and competitor coverage, so you can judge whether the data answers your expansion questions.
How often is the data updated?
Huq data is updated weekly. Each week adds to the trend, so you can see whether activity in a potential gap is steady, seasonal or growing before you commit. Weekly updates also let you refresh the map as new competitors open.
Does Huq cover the US cities I'm considering?
Huq measures foot traffic across the US and in 35 markets worldwide, manually validating more than 1,000 locations in each market twice a year. No sensors, cameras or hardware are needed, so you can analyze any address, including competitor stores and areas where you have no presence yet. Tell us which cities you are considering.
Questions? Talk to us
Book a demoAbout Huq
Huq is a location intelligence company. We turn anonymised mobile location data into footfall, catchment and visitor insight for any place, so retailers, property owners and local authorities can make decisions on evidence.
See how your locations really perform
Up to 5 locations. No cost, no commitment.