When Stephen Yalof took over as president and chief operating officer of Tanger Outlets in April 2020, it felt like boarding an airplane already headed for a crash. The company’s 36 centers were closed because of Covid, its 400 employees were working from home and the stock price had dropped to about $4 a share (it now trades around $34). He had to stop the plane from going down.
Yalof took advantage of the downtime to drive from the company’s headquarters in Greensboro, North Carolina, to some of Tanger’s outlets.
“The centers were closed, but I saw cars in the parking lot, and it was the mall walkers who were looking to do their morning constitutional,” Yalof said. It was a lightbulb moment for the 25-year retail veteran. The centers had become a go-to space in the community, where people could congregate outdoors during the pandemic.
As the centers slowly reopened, the migration of city-dwellers to the suburbs brought a swell of new customers. Yalof filled the 1 million square feet that tenants had vacated with non-traditional users, like restaurants and full-price brands that aren’t typically found in outlet centers.
“We started to build this little open-air culture of people that needed a place to go,” said Yalof, who succeeded Steven B. Tanger, son of founder Stanley Tanger, as CEO in January 2021.
Today, the company operates 37 outlet centers across 22 states and Canada. But as Yalof expanded its focus from only outlets toward open-air shopping centers as well, he dropped “outlets” from the name, rebranding it to to Tanger in 2023. That year, the company purchased its first non-outlet center — the Bridge Street Town Centre in Huntsville, Alabama. It now owns three non-outlet, open-air centers.
Yalof relocated from Manhattan to Greensboro with his wife, Liora, when he took the top job at Tanger. The Real Deal sat down with Yalof in New York to talk about his 30-year career in retail, his childhood and his love of the Grateful Dead.
The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Born: January 15, 1963
Hometown: Livingston, New Jersey
Lives: Greensboro, North Carolina
Family: Wife Liora, children Brooke and Jon
“All these major real estate guys — the ones in The Real Deal you read about — are the people who have become my heroes.”
What was your first job?
I had a paper route as a kid. I took that over at 10 or 11 years old. I probably did it for two or three years before I handed it off to the next kid. That was a seven-day-a-week gig, and if you wanted to go on vacation for three days, you had to find somebody who was going to take your paper route for you. You learn very early on about sales, you learn responsibility, and you learn customer service because you want to get a tip.
What were you like as a kid?
I picked up a guitar at 10 years old and never put it down. I played sports, but the thing that I loved the most was the band I put together all through high school and in college. I played acoustic guitar and electric guitar and I became a big fan of the Grateful Dead in the late ’70s in high school and have been a fan ever since. Through college, I always played in Grateful Dead cover bands and traveled and saw way more shows than I probably should share.
Where were you when Jerry Garcia died?
I was working for a company called New Plan Realty Trust and I was in my office listening to the radio really low, and all of a sudden I heard about it. It was the worst news ever because there was just so much more to see. I freaked out and I had to leave. I left and a bunch of my friends with our acoustic guitars all met at Strawberry Fields (in Central Park) and literally sat out in a circle and started playing guitar. We were there first, but by the time we left there were hundreds of people just sitting there playing guitar in Strawberry Fields.
Wow. So at some point you went back to work. What were you doing at New Plan Realty Trust?
My job was to lease outlet shopping centers in the early ’90s. There was a book that had every outlet retailer and I took the book, flipped it and started to cold call. So rather than starting with A, like the guy who had a job before me, I went right to the Z people.
But it wasn’t your first experience with retail — your dad was an executive at Macy’s. How did he pass his passion for retail on to you?
He was in operations, and on Saturday afternoons he would walk malls and walk stores, because that was the day when customers were out. I used to take the bus into the city and I’d wear a blazer with a fake flower. There was a white carnation that everybody used to wear on the floor at Macy’s, which was like an indication that you work there. I always loved it. He taught me that there are no unimportant people.
Tell me about your mom.
My parents were married when my mom was 19 or 20. She had three kids before she was 25. She got married before she graduated from college, so when we all were in elementary and nursery school, she went back to get her degree in sociology. She worked on an open heart surgery team in Newark, New Jersey, and her feeling was that doctors speak a language that people can’t understand, so she should be the person who is the interface between the doctor and the patient. It turned out to be a really cool niche thing that she sort of created. Somebody said “you should write a book about it.” She did, and that was her first of 15 books. The thing I learned from my mom is there’s nothing you can’t do.
At some point, you went to work for The Gap.
I did a whole bunch of deals with The Gap. There was a new COO there who wanted to bring in people who had some real estate experience, and my friend Kenny Pilot, who I just did a bunch of deals with, said, “Hey, would you be interested?” So I left being on the landlord side to be on the tenant side. My territory was New York City and then Canada.
That’s when you became the man to know.
It happened when I was the New York Gap guy. All these major real estate guys — the ones in The Real Deal you read about — are the people who have become my heroes. It’s like the Rudins, and Moinians and the Cheras. And then I met Ben Ashkenazy through these guys. Now all of a sudden, I’m at their weddings. You become part of that whole fabric.
And then you landed at Ralph Lauren?
I was there for 15 years. Every day was amazing. Every day we were scouting new store locations, and then it became global. There was a year that I did a deal in five or six continents. I traveled all over the place — China, Japan.
How did you transition to executive at Simon?
In 2014, Simon [Premium Outlets] bought Chelsea Property Group, their outlet business. A lot of the Chelsea leadership was stepping out of the business. David [Simon] was putting his own stamp on the leadership team. He and I had become friendly just through, you know, whatever, mutual friends and that kind of thing. One day we found ourselves chatting at an event and he said, “Hey, I know you’ve got outlet experience, and, you know, would you be interested?”
What are some highlights of your time there?
We built a lot of new centers from the ground up. It’s really hard to transition from being a guy who’s executing to being a guy who’s managing the people that are doing the deals. I had to keep everything in check. You learn to not micromanage things that you know little about.
Did you know the Tanger family from your previous jobs in retail?
Having grown up in the outlet business, Steve Tanger and I always bumped into each other at the ICSCs [International Council of Shopping Centers event] or other retail conferences along the way. We never really talked about a job before but we had a very friendly relationship. The transition from Simon to Tanger came at a time when I had heard that Steve Tanger was stepping out of his role as CEO, and was looking to move on as chairman. I didn’t get the call. I was working for a competitor and my guess is that’s not something they were interested in. Then Covid happened, and that’s when I got the call. He was like “I’ve got to figure out how to dig out from Covid, and I really could use a partner.”
Did you have to convince your wife to move from Manhattan to North Carolina?
It was Covid so the transition worked out really well. Our kids were out of college, so it was a time in life when it was a smart risk. We saw the move to Greensboro as an adventure, and it’s been really fun. It’s a cool, small town. We live in a house after living in an apartment for 20-something years. There’s the Tanger Performing Arts Center and some fun stuff comes through there. We go to Greensboro Coliseum — it’s truck pulls and rodeos, and every once in a while, a cool concert comes through. And the dog’s happy.
What kind of dog?
A golden retriever named Crosby.
Now you have three full-price centers. How is that going?
Great! The muscle it takes to operate an outlet is not dissimilar. We’ve been hybriding our outlets and now, all of a sudden, we’re buying full-price centers.
What do you think about experiential retail?
I think it’s incumbent on the retailers to provide an experience for the customer. A big differentiator between shopping online and shopping in store is customer service. It goes back to my days as a newspaper kid. You put the paper on the guy’s front porch if you want a tip.
Do you think you’ll ever put a roller coaster in one of your centers?
Why not? I like a good Ferris wheel.
Which of your centers is your favorite and why?
I’m gonna go with Nashville, because we built Nashville out of the ground since I’ve been here. We wanted better food, and it’s almost 8 percent of our footprint. We added more service-oriented retail because when I go shopping I want to get my hair or my nails done. We made the parking easier. It is an outlet center, but we have all these other uses mixed in.
Have you passed on your affection for retail to your children?
My son works for my company. About a year and a half ago, my head of leasing said he wanted to start an associate program to bring young people into the business that don’t necessarily have retail leasing experience. He showed me the résumés of the first couple of candidates, and there was my son. This was something that they had plotted outside of my knowledge.
Are you still in a band?
Yes. The band I play in now, we have one standing gig in December during New York ICSC at the Red Lion and this year will be 26 or 27 years.
What’s the latest concert you went to?
I saw The Queens: 4 Legends at the Greensboro Coliseum. Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight and Stephanie Mills. It was a little loud but it was cool.
How do you uplift employees during tough times like the pandemic and hurricane Helene, which hit hard near the center in Asheville, North Carolina?
There are no magic words. I think you just show up. That’s what we did in Asheville when Helene hit. We would fill our cars with stuff and bring things. The town of Asheville desperately needed a way of getting provisions, supplies, battery chargers, oxygen tanks, water to people that were cut off. So we brought in a cargo drone that could move stuff.
What is your relationship like now with the Tanger family, and Steven Tanger, who’s still the chairman of the board?
We speak almost every day. We’ve always been friends, we’ve worked together, we were competitors, I was a client, but we always just had a mutual fondness for one another. He refers to himself as my older brother. When he asked me to join the company, he called me a partner from day one and said, “Let’s be partners and have fun.”