Trade Area Solutions is a privately held consulting firm that operated as Warkentine & Associates prior to 2004 offering a wide range of market analysis solutions to a broad range of clients including retail business, agribusiness, financial institutions, and government agencies.  Our area of specialization is in spatial economics as it relates to network planning and site selection studies.  We  offer market research solutions including estimating and analyzing a firm's trade area, analyzing the performance of an existing network, competitive analysis, demographic and segmentation analysis, custom mapping, other GIS related analysis, and more.

The basic goal of market analysis is to better understand your market so your firm can make decisions that improve profitability on its existing network as well as maximizing potential returns and minimizing the risk in expansion.  Locating your business has always been been one of the most important decisions that can have the greatest impact on long-term profitability. New locations are also one of the easiest way to grow your business, but they also represent one of the most costly business mistakes.

The key to a high level of market understanding begins with an accurate and complete understanding of the underlying supply and demand for goods and services. This requires a framework to provide the basis for understanding and quantifying the complex nature of consumer buying behavior.  Trade Area Solutions have developed a market research process that provides a seamless solution to both network optimization and new site selection making it an ideal tool for network planning.

The Trade Area Solutions advantage is our data expertise and the framework that builds and utilizes these data.  This provides the basis for accurately understanding and quantifying the complex nature of consumer and producer purchase behavior.  Not only do we understand data from varied sources, but we also fill data gaps such as regional supply and demand information.  These data  are foundational and virtually always missing, which threatens the accuracy of market research.  Our framework utilizes this new data and combines it with other public and proprietary sources to help our clients expand sales within their existing network and identify and rank market opportunities while minimizing their risk.

Gary Warkentine - gary@tradeareasolutions.com

Gary Warkentine is the Founder and Principal of Trade Area Solutions and its predecessor Warkentine & Associates.   Gary is a multi-disciplined applied economist who specializes in quantitative spatial supply and demand analysis as it relates to business and agri-business market research problems.  He is considered an expert in data, not only as a data-interpreter, but in the ability to see and understand the impact of data that is often missed or unavailable in market research projects.  He has extensive experience in solving complex economic problems using statistics, mathematics and economic models.  In the mid-1990s, he pioneered the development of a new spatial economic framework and Geographical Information System modeling process for site selection and network planning that ensures spatial supply and demand equilibrium.  Prior to consulting, Gary was a Senior Market Analyst in the Market Analysis division of Agriculture and Agri-food Canada.  He has a Masters degree in Agriculture Economics from the University of Manitoba. 

Keith Fortowsky - kfortowsky@gmail.com

Keith Fortowsky is the Chief Technologist/Data Architect at Trade Area Solutions. Keith is an Applied Economist (MSc, University of Minnesota) and Computer Systems Analyst. Keith's professional interests focus upon tools, practices, and strategies to support knowledge-based innovation - starting with the data, but always with the ultimate aim of supporting managers' evidence-based "strategic conversation". Keith is currently Coordinator, Institutional Research at the University of Regina (Canada). In this role he develops, maintains, and disseminates "institutional statistics": the corporate-level record of performance at the University of Regina. Prior to his current position, Mr. Fortowsky worked for 20 years in transportation and agricultural research and policy positions, including positions with government and an international engineering consultancy. Much of this work involved development of data systems to support policy analysis. Keith was one of Gary's early and most enthusiastic clients. Since he couldn't afford to "buy the company" he has happily settled for becoming an integral part of its advancement.

Jason Skotheim - jason@tradeareasolutions.com

Jason heads the technical services support section at Trade Area Solutions.  Trained as a regional and applied economist, Jason brings a wealth of experience with technical quantitative analysis and systems programming to Trade Area Solutions.  Jason spent 10 years working at the University of Saskatchewan as a research economist developing custom software solutions, conducting spatial economic research, and trade and supply chain analysis.  Jason has written numerous economic research papers, policy briefs and developed international trade, transportation and financial models.  Jason brings extensive experience in object-orientated programming and maintains a number of programming and scripting languages as well as geospatial and database programming skills.  Jason holds a Masters of Science degree from the University of Saskatchewan in Agricultural Economics.  He works out of the Saskatoon office.

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