A Dolce & Gabbana flagship on Madison Avenue. A two-level Gucci store in the Meatpacking District. A Supreme store lease that helped reshape the Bowery. Marquee retail deals like these have long been the domain of global brokerage giants like Newmark and Cushman & Wakefield and CBRE.
But in today’s New York City retail market, a different kind of player is quietly taking over some of the industry’s most coveted assignments. A new generation of boutique retail brokerages — firms like Lantern, Odyssey, Retail by Mona and GoodSpace — is carving out market share in prime corridors from Soho to Madison Avenue. Staffed by veterans who cut their teeth at legacy firms or under some of the city’s largest retail landlords, these shops are leaner, more brand-conscious and increasingly aligned with the tenants they represent.
Their rise comes at a moment when retail, particularly at the high end, is steadily recovering. As New York’s retail corridors fill up again with luxury flagships, direct-to-consumer brands and experiential concepts, boutique brokerages are competing head-to-head with industry giants and often winning. Their success reflects both a shift in the retail market and a broader evolution in commercial real estate where specialization, branding and relationships can outweigh size.
“As a retail broker, you just don’t really need all that red tape and politics and all the craziness of these massive companies in order to do our deals,” said Retail by Mona co-founder Brandon Singer, who cut his teeth at RKF (later acquired by Newmark) and Cushman before leaving during the pandemic to start his own firm.
“I don’t see why you would sit there at this massive company where you’re just a number,” Singer said. “The client trusts you as the professional, as long as you’re best in class.”
To be sure, the big firms still broker the majority of New York’s large retail leases even as the boutiques carve out their corners. Whether the smaller firms’ winning streak endures could depend on how they navigate the next phase of retail’s evolution, but for now, in the storefronts that define New York’s streetscape, the little guys are having a big moment.
Retail’s unlikely comeback
After years of “retail apocalypse” headlines fueled by e-commerce disruption and then Covid, New York’s top shopping corridors have rebounded with surprising force. Leasing activity along Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue and in Williamsburg and Soho has surged over the past two years, driven largely by luxury and premium brands expanding their physical footprints.
Vacancy in prime retail corridors has tightened significantly from pandemic-era highs, while asking rents — though still below their 2019 peak in many locations — have stabilized and, in select stretches, begun to climb again. Manhattan’s retail availability rate fell to 12.5 percent in the third quarter of 2025, down 1.4 percent year-over-year and approaching historic lows, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
“I don’t see why you would sit there at this massive company where you’re just a number.”
The recovery marks a sharp reversal from pandemic-era distress, when availability peaked near 28 percent in 2021. There were 173 ground-floor vacancies across Manhattan’s 16 prime shopping corridors at the end of last year, an 11 percent drop from a year earlier, according to CBRE. Average Manhattan asking rents hovered around $670 per square foot in the fourth quarter, up from a pandemic low of $615 per square foot.
Luxury retail leasing has been a primary driver of the recovery, accounting for a disproportionate share of new deals in Manhattan’s most prestigious corridors. On Madison and Fifth avenues, availability has shrunk as brands like Hermès, Chanel and Gucci compete for limited flagship space. A wave of digitally native brands — from Warby Parker to Gymshark — has taken storefronts. And experiential retail — fitness concepts, padel clubs, immersive showrooms — has also filled space, adding to the momentum.
For boutique brokerages, this environment has been fertile ground.
“I think because retail is pretty niche, it has allowed independent firms to acquire disproportionate market share, whereas size really matters more in the commercial office space,” said Matthew Seigel, co-founder of Lantern Real Estate Advisors + Partners.
Breaking away from the big
Many of the founders behind these boutiques followed a similar path: years spent working for large brokerages or retail landlords, followed by a decision to strike out on their own.
Seigel spent nine years at Cushman, then led leasing for Joe Sitt’s Thor Equities before launching Lantern in 2018 with co-founder Tal Bar-or. His firm was born out of a desire to offer more bespoke advisory services at a time when consolidation was sweeping the brokerage industry.
“We saw a lot of consolidation in the commercial real estate service provider landscape — acquisitions, IPOs, big companies getting bigger, and we felt that there was a very significant opportunity to provide high-touch bespoke advisory work,” Seigel said.
At Retail by Mona, Singer spent 10 years at Cushman before leaving during the pandemic to start his own firm — what he describes as a leap into the unknown. He had the financial backing of heavy hitters Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs. RFR Holding was an early investor in Mona and recently provided additional capital to support its expansion, although the financial details have not been disclosed.
“I quit on a Friday, and then Monday I started Mona,” he said. “There was no one in the office because it was Covid. It was the Wild West.”
Singer and his co-founder Michael Cody had long believed that traditional brokerages were ill-suited to the evolving retail landscape. While legacy firms focused heavily on office leasing and capital markets, retail was often treated as a secondary business line.
“I figured the opportunity was there to create something fresher, newer, hipper,” he said. “That’s where retail was going.”
Odyssey Retail Advisors’ Rich Johnson came from yet another angle, having worked in-house at luxury conglomerate Kering. His big break came when the Chera family hired him as a retail consultant at the Wynn in Las Vegas, where he inked dozens of luxury leases and co-founded Odyssey with luxury retail veteran Charlie Koniver in 2019.
“Our business kind of just grew like a snowball,” Johnson said. “I had a lot of connections with people in the industry, on the retail side already, and people tend to move around. Some of the early clients weren’t even former colleagues, they were just people that I had been around and worked with.”
At GoodSpace, founders Chris DeCrosta and Hank O’Donnell built their firm around a similar ethos: strip away bureaucracy, invest in presentation and align closely with the brands they represent.
“You don’t need to be cool to do office space,” DeCrosta said. “Office space isn’t cool. It’s not an emotional decision, right? But when somebody sells a black ESPO shirt, then the guys who come in to do the real estate are in black ESPO shirts, it just tends to work a little bit better.” (An ESPO shirt is a T-shirt with a design by contemporary artist Stephen Powers.)
The “cool factor”
In retail brokerage, the cool factor can be a competitive edge. Unlike office leasing, where decisions are driven largely by economics and logistics, retail deals are often tied to identity, aesthetics and cultural relevance. Those factors can influence a brand’s choice of location, neighbors and even broker. Boutique firms have leaned into this dynamic.
GoodSpace invested early in design, mapping software and branding to ensure its materials matched, or improved upon, those of larger competitors. Retail by Mona built a highly visible presence with bold purple signage and a social media strategy. Odyssey developed granular databases tracking hundreds of storefronts block by block. Lantern combined leasing with capital markets to offer a broader advisory platform.
These firms also tend to mirror the brands they represent. Their brokers dress like their clients, understand their audiences and speak their language, whether that’s luxury fashion, streetwear or wellness.
“We consider ourselves part of the team,” GoodSpace co-founder Hank O’Donnell said. “We fit in a lot more than a lace-up leather shoe, blue pinstripe suit broker would.”
The approach is winning the boutique firms business. Lantern, which bills itself as the buttoned-up counterpart to some of the other boutique brokerages, represented landlord Tahl Propp Equities in the 23,000-square-foot Madison Avenue deal for Dolce & Gabbana in 2023. Odyssey represented the tenant on the other side of the transaction, which Seigel described as “a good one for the little guys.”
Retail by Mona has landed high-profile assignments including Gucci’s Meatpacking District flagship, Goyard’s Madison Avenue store and deals for Gymshark and Padel Haus. Odyssey has advised on luxury deals at the v Building and Hudson Yards, leveraging relationships in the luxury fashion industry. GoodSpace, meanwhile, works with hip brands like Khaite, Stussy and Supreme.
“I think when a prominent retailer has selected an independent advisor, it speaks volumes to the strength of that relationship,” Seigel said. “I’m not saying this doesn’t exist at the bigger firms, but maybe with some of the bigger firms, just by definition, there’s so much more volume, figuring out the relationships is more complicated.”
A different business model
At large brokerages, internal competition can be intense, with multiple teams vying for the same client and commissions often split among multiple brokers. Singer cited this dynamic as a key reason he left Cushman.
“There’s a lot of internal conflict between the professionals fighting over the same business,” he said. “A broker comes in and says, ‘Hey, I just got a meeting with Company X to go represent them.’ The other guy down the hall says, ‘No, I did.’ And then you go to management and before you know it, the commission is now split between you and some guy that you don’t even know.”
At the large firms, retail brokers can’t take on office deals. If a client comes calling with an opportunity outside their specialty — or outside their territory — the deal gets handed off to a team in the appropriate sector or submarket.
By contrast, boutiques tend to emphasize collaboration and specialization. Retail by Mona organizes by practice area, like luxury, food and beverage or wellness, rather than by individual producers. Odyssey and Lantern pay their junior brokers salaries, allowing them to learn the business without immediate pressure to close deals. GoodSpace avoids taking on competing clients altogether.
The result, founders say, is a more cohesive culture.
“Brokerage houses are just a collection of people,” DeCrosta said. “How those people are treated is what separates one company from another.”
Keeping it lean
The rise of boutique retail brokerages raises a key question: Is this a lasting shift, or a moment tied to a particular market cycle? Luxury retail has been a major tailwind as brands have expanded aggressively. That wave has generated ample deal flow, enough to support a growing number of independent firms.
But retail is also cyclical. A downturn in consumer spending, a pullback in luxury expansion or a resurgence of e-commerce could test the resilience of these boutiques.
Some have other business lines. Lantern has built a capital markets practice alongside its leasing business that focuses mostly on brokering debt. Retail by Mona, which already has 30 employees, plans to expand into other services, though Singer declined to say which ones. Odyssey blends brokerage with consulting work, often acting as an in-house real estate advisor for brands.
Others, like GoodSpace, are more cautious about growth, prioritizing culture and selectivity over scale. The firm has seven employees.
“I don’t see it getting much beyond 20 people,” DeCrosta said. “Then we start to look like a brokerage house, which is something we don’t want.”