business you aren't able to do that as much unless you have this like group of retail stores. >> the company's most expensive and possibly riskiest test-and-learn project involved real estate. the goal was to figure out what store locations could make the most money. >> the idea of testing different retail locations was because we want to have a good plan for growth. and you could quickly say the first store was a downtown location. let's get in all downtowns around the country and let's expand that way. that's not very -- it's not a big thought. what we wanted to do was test a suburban mall, a suburban main street. and that's what we did in the first year. and it's sfof do that. >> -- it's expensive to do that. >> while the idea isn't necessarily cost effective, gaskins says the long-term goal is to save cash and better position marbles for expansion. >> we've made the decision to open 15 downtown locations and really we should have been a suburban mall concept.