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By the age of three, children should be hitting milestones like walking upstairs unassisted, washing their own hands, and dressing themselves (the buttons and laces may need to wait). Will Albaugh, currently the senior director of real estate, construction, and facilities at Sleep Number, was already drawing detailed maps of the route to his grandmother’s house 10 miles away. He didn’t yet understand cartography—that would come a few years later—so he drew every light pole, every stoplight. He would walk his parents through the journey on paper, confused that his parents hadn’t memorized every conceivable landmark on the trip.
Albaugh soon memorized the directory of the South Coast Plaza Mall in Costa Mesa, California. He started drawing maps of fictional cities. By sixth grade, he was integrating highway and interstate systems into his maps, designing ideal locations for malls and other retail outlets. He created one map comprising some 50 pages that all fit together. His friend’s father, a cartographer, told him he had designed an entire city for between 4 million and 5 million residents.
In college, Albaugh mastered the world’s strangest party trick. He’d memorized almost every mall in every state in the US. Friends would rattle off random cities, and Albaugh would tell them about the malls in the area. Commercial real estate was his passion, his obsession, and he collected maps the way others might collect baseball cards.
“There’s so much that fascinates me,” Albaugh says. “Why do certain locations fail while others thrive? Why does one retailer excel in one type of project but not another? Why do some cities grow while others decline? Those were the questions I was always asking, so it probably makes sense I made it my career.”
Building Expertise
Over 20 years, Albaugh has provided strategic guidance backed up by decades of data and research. He has strived to seamlessly combine the art and science of the real estate development and site selection process through his work and educational history paired with his genuine passion for the industry and geography in general. If you’re going to have a city knowledge showdown with the senior director, keep in mind that in his free time, he enjoys examining Google Earth and watching cities flex over time.
Albaugh returned to Sleep Number in 2022 after nearly seven years at Starbucks as a store development manager for over 300 company-operated stores. Part of the reason Albaugh was asked to return to Sleep Number is because the real estate team was still working off the documents and strategy that he built out six years prior. But things had changed, and the company needed a new direction.
“When I came back, it was a different world from when I left,” Albaugh explains. “We’ve added over 200 stores and are now in all 50 states, including most metro areas over 250,000.”
“Will Albaugh’s instant recall of retail trade area details—without notes—makes every market review impressively efficient. If only we could take notes that quickly,” says national retail developer Thomas English. “Partnering with Sleep Number on 28 developments has been an honor. Together, we employ data-driven strategies to achieve exceptional outcomes for retailers and real estate investors.”
The senior director now oversees areas that are new, even for him. Sleep Number industrial sites, warehouses, and offices are under his purview, not simply strict retail environments. Albaugh says the learning experience has been enjoyable. Looking forward, company strategy for the future is his highest priority.
“We currently have a delicate economy, inflation, higher interest rates, and a slowed housing market as challenges. When home sales slow, home furnishing and bedding markets tend to follow,” he explains.
“Our increased store count along with the current economic conditions has led us to become more strategic in our real estate due diligence and intentional about where we open stores, where we relocate stores, and what new business formats we may consider for the future. When the economy does turn, we want to be prepared to maximize it from a market strategy perspective.”
Albaugh wasn’t able to delve into specifics, but he did say that Sleep Number is evaluating a number of options as the company continues to explore new ways to grow, including how other best-in-class retailers such as Target, Nordstrom, RH, and Pottery Barn have addressed and implemented different formats and trade area strategies.
This leadership role has required Albaugh to not delve so deep into the details, or at least allow his people to work at their own pace. Despite his passion, he’s not a micromanager. Albaugh tries to lead with empathy but also with intention and the expectation that his people truly believe that the real estate team can continue to help Sleep Number transform.
Outside the office, Albaugh has other passions that don’t include keys or latitude and longitude indicators. Albaugh played volleyball in college and for a significant period of his life. As he’s grown older, he’s also taken up pickleball and has even built a court in his backyard. When Albaugh goes, he goes hard. He’s been that way his entire life.
Nearly a Secret Agent
Before his real estate career took off, Will Albaugh nearly joined the CIA. While he was working in the cartography lab during grad school, a fellow cartographer who had signed up with the agency encouraged him to apply for a role.
Albaugh went through a year of formal interviews, stress tests, and scenario walk-throughs that the senior director jokes were somewhere along the lines of an escape room experience. He sat for a four-hour polygraph session, and the agency contacted virtually anyone he’d ever known about his character.
In the end, the CIA offered Albaugh the role, but he elected to turn it down so he could help his wife work through the grief of losing her mother. They’re still happily married, and Albaugh knew he did the right thing. Besides, he’s still got an incredible story.
