Pop-ups stores – an exciting avenue for retailers big or small

Essentially, they are temporary retail stores!

As the name suggests, these stores quite literally ‘pop-up’ in temporary locations, ranging from short-term unit rentals to public parks. Some pop-ups stay in their locations for months at a time, but some or as short as one-off events on a single day.

Although pop-up stores have a long history going back to the 90’s, they’ve recently gained notoriety as retailers try to compete with online shopping by creating bespoke, exclusive experiences, incentivising customers to shop in person.

The ones that get the most notice in the media are pop-ups held by the major, luxury brands. With Selfridges even creating a permanent location in their London flagship store that is dedicated to pop-ups, called the corner shop.

“Luxury brands are increasingly drawn to the allure of pop-up stores as a strategic avenue to captivate consumers, craft immersive brand encounters, and ignite fervour around their offerings. This pivot towards pop-ups represents a departure from the traditional confines of brick-and-mortar retail, affording luxury labels a dynamic platform to innovate, collaborate, and curate bespoke experiences.”
- Retail Focus Magazine: ‘The Adoption of Pop-up Stores by Luxury Brands’

Pop-ups aren’t just a tool for huge brands and retailers, they could have benefits for smaller retailers and online only retailers too.

This is designed to play on a customer’s fear of missing out as it is time-limited in its very nature, making it easy to create a sense of urgency and exclusivity, which will drive customers to engage with you.

This makes them ideal for exclusive discounts and giveaways, or other offerings such as product demonstrations and launches.

Pop-ups allow you to break free of the confines of your physical location or have a short-term physical presence if you are an exclusively online retailer.

One of the ways this could be useful is if you are opening a new store that is set back from the main area of foot traffic, you can hold a pop-up on opening day in the high traffic area with an offer to entice people to your store.

Pop-ups can bring you face to face with your customer base, whether existing or potential. This is especially true for online retailers. In general, people are gravitating towards marketing that comes from a person, not a faceless brand. A pop-up can get a real person in front of your customers, which is one the easiest way to engender feelings of brand loyalty.

What better way to determine if there is a market for your product or offering than by physically spending some time selling in that location? This also create an ideal opportunity to survey or poll your potential new customers for their opinions.

If you are a retailer that exclusively operates online but are considering branching out into having a physical location, this is a relatively low-impact way to trial it.

Alternatively, you could use temporary pop-ups as a supplemental strategy to get your brand in front of people and incentivise them to shop online with you in future.

Pop-ups can be used as part of a wider strategy, giving you a reason to contact your customers in order to promote the pop-up event and create content and PR in the lead up to the day.

The actual pop-up itself will then feed into future content, especially as it allows you to be face to face with your customers and see what about your business they want to engage with.

User generated content (UGC), simply means social content created by your user base. It’s unlikely or rare that someone will go to your place of business and take a picture to post online but the unique nature of a pop-up, especially if they get some kind of freebie, will make people more likely to post about your business. Extending your online reach in a way that will feel genuine, which is helpful because word of mouth still reigns supreme for brand trust and loyalty.

Bigger budget pop-ups focus on creating something that feels like an experience, or something that people can engage with. Whether that is something they walk through or interact with.

“It’s basically a humongous billboard that people can interact with… We come up with a disruptive, creative space and bring in people who can browse products and find out much more about the brand.”
- Retail Focus: ‘Interview: Backlash co-founder Katie Peake on making the high street pop again’

One example from a luxury brand is the pop-up Pandora held in London Southbank, which looked like a huge jewellery box and could be walked through, the experience even included the chance to create your own artwork. None of this directly sells Pandora’s products but it does create a sense of their brand, and so, their brand offering in turn, as the whole experience was about love and expressions of it in art.

Another example is the famous ‘Barbie Beach hut’ created by the make-up brand Nyx, who were fast to capitalise on the hype around the Barbie movie. The beach hut offered people the chance to try out the brands make up, gave them slushies to drink by the pool and plenty of selfie-worthy spaces.

Charity shops have even been known to join the pop-up trend, creating temporary boutiques with clothes to browse (read more here).

Obviously, installations like this might be a bit too hard on the budget for smaller retailers, but you can create interaction through free samples, product demonstrations or testing, or by offering complimentary services. For example, a make-up brand offering free makeovers. Or you can give people ‘a behind the scenes’ preview on how a product is made.

Short-term rentals of retail units on the high-street

• Malls and shopping centres
• On the high-street itself
• Pretty much anywhere!

The temporary, transportable nature of pop-ups means they can be used a variety of spaces. Some businesses have even created vehicles kitted out as a mobile pop-up shops, meaning anywhere the van could (legally) park, could become a mini-store.

Pop-ups help to occupy units or spaces that would otherwise be empty and draw foot traffic that might not otherwise have been there.
This can in-turn only benefit retailers with a physical presence

At Morplan, we have products that are designed to be easy to transport, from knock-flat, easy to assemble clothes rails on wheels, light weight display furniture with wheels and display plinths, as well as brand-ablepaper carrier bags for giveaways.

We also offer a variety products on our hire service, which includes mannequins, clothes rails and steamers.