4 Great Examples of the Pop-Up Economy
Whether you’ve stumbled upon an unequivocally millennial pink beauty products shop in Covent Garden, a flashy neon green temporary fashion store in Manhattan or a liquid blue drink “experience” in Sydney, you’re probably quite comfortable with the notion of the pop-up.
It’s no big news that pop-up shops are taking the retail industry by storm, but examples of the so-called “pop-up economy” can be seen in various sectors, ranging from art exhibitions to restaurants, hospitality and even workspaces.
But let’s back up a little. When talking about the pop-up, I am referring to the latest iteration of a pretty standard concept of making business, which involves selling products or offering service from a temporary venue and/or for a limited amount of time. The concept had a re-make sometime in the ’90s, specifically attributed to a new Los Angeles trend.
Pop-up stores offer many advantages over the standard brick and mortar business model, especially for young brands and entrepreneurs who want to test the waters before launching into serious investments, raise awareness around a product or service or just make some noise with a genuinely fresh and enjoyable brand experience.
Also, interestingly enough, the pop-up phenomenon is strongly linked to the ever-increasing share of online shopping among the retail industry. ECommerce in the UK accounted for over 19% of all sales in 2019 (Source: Office for National Statistics). Although the number might seem small, it’s important to highlight firstly, how it’s been steadily growing over the past 10 years and secondly, how that percentage becomes substantially higher in the younger population, which is exactly who the brands want to engage with the creation of pop-ups.
The focus of pop-ups is, of course, on the delivery of a unique experience for customers. In this, the pop-up economy offers an alternative model of investment and returns.
The intrinsic value of a pop-up shop might be less about patrons making a purchase there and then (and the relative turnover for the day, the week or the month, depending on how long the pop-up runs for) and more about offering an image of the brand that is not easily forgotten about. This has been referred to as “experiential shopping” and is another incredibly interesting up and coming trend spanning across several different industries.
This is backed up by experts such as Steven Dennis who believes “shopping in the future will need to be an amalgamation of both online shopping and physical stores, where customers move seamlessly between the two.” The physical stores Dennis is talking about might actually be a slightly more permanent version of the pop-up, highly focused on incredibly high-quality brand experience and customers acquisition and retainment.
Along the same line, Maryellis Bunn, the creator behind the Museum of IceCream, believes that “as more retailers move entirely online, their former shop fronts will be replaced by experiences”. Experiences that enhance the brand image, for example, with the pop-up being a perfect example where marketing budget could be invested for that purpose.
Now, let’s have a look at four great examples of the pop-up economy in action.
The pop-up restaurant
by Noma
Noma Mexico ran from April to May 2017 in Tulum, a small town on the Caribbean coastline of the Peninsula. The pop-up is the latest of a series of three temporary ventures that Redzepi, at the head of Noma, decided to embark on while the permanent location in Copenhagen was being fundamentally rebuilt. Previous temporary Noma restaurants include a two-months Japan popup (2014) and a 10 weeks Australian one (2015).
Far from being a hit on day one, the temporary restaurant was hugely successful in the end. Noma Mexico’s multi-course dinner has been said to be, maybe, “the meal of the decade.”
The hype about the limited number of tickets to be sold helped, but the key to success was the incredibly high-quality dining experience offered by the Noma team.
Noma Mexico is only one of the several examples of temporary restaurants and chef’s residencies that have been popping up in every major city in the world lately. That said, it’s also an interesting example of a restaurant utilising its well-earned reputation to launch into something new, unexpected and exciting, a willingness to take some risks and the great opportunity to do so for a limited amount of time.
Pop-up restaurants, when done right, can be a huge boost to a chef’s reputation and can launch a food and beverage group into a whole new universe of opportunities. Collaboration with existing business owners and suitable venues plays a huge part in this. That said, the focus should be on offering something unique and unexpected, experimenting with entertainment and design elements, and overall providing the highest possible quality experience.
The pop-up hotel
by Habitas
Habitas Tulum is a fantastic success story, born from the push of the existing Habitas community, giving voice to a need for a unique event celebrating New Year’s Eve.
The pop-up hotel experiment was very much about creating something that the founders themselves would enjoy, bringing together good music, food and people under the same roof and not necessarily thinking about the bottom line. That much for putting the value back on experiences!
That said, when the opportunity to buy out an existing hotel in Tulum for the whole month of December came up, and serious investment was required, the numbers just didn’t add up. With only so many rooms at the hotel, the group would have run at a loss. So, pretty soon, an idea emerged: Habitas could double the number of keys by simply setting up temporary tents on the property grounds.
This, of course, not only would allow them to launch a financially viable venture but also to offer to the community the unique experience of staying in a luxury campsite, which appealed to families (for the excitement) and couples (for the romance) alike.
Habitas Tulum’s pop-up hotel was a great success: it allowed the company to expand into other venues internationally and to hone in on the unique value proposition of creating hotel stays that are based around activities and participation in stark opposition to the anonymous rooms people usually just spend the night at.
And this, really, is the takeaway here for more physically permanent hotels and the hospitality industry at large: creating meaningful experiences for guests, deeply embedded in its time and place, with a twist of uniqueness and a touch of “temporary” for sake of the hype.
The pop-up Museum
by Refinery29
It’s an array of one-of-a-kind experiences under one roof. It’s a space for interaction and exploration: a place to dance, paint, think, make new friends, give a damn, it’s a tasting menu of contemporary culture built by voices in art, style, activism, and technology…it’s a visually stunning stage for creative expressionists, an invitation to dream bigger.
- 29rooms.com
The opening line of 29Rooms says it all. The temporary exhibition experiment was launched in 2015 by the team behind Refinery29, and has run once a year science then. As the name suggests, the “museum” is effectively a series of rooms where visitors, rather than passively engaging with art, are instead surrounded by it, in the form of music, performance, physical and digital installations and more: opportunity to interact is everywhere!
The temporary nature of the exhibition (and this could be said of the hotel and the restaurant too!) is of prime importance as people, especially younger digital natives, are looking more actively for uniqueness not only in products but also in experiences.
Although the photogenic nature of the exhibition is key, and taking selfies might seem the key element here, it’s important to highlight how the focus is on the experience of the spaces, rather than the contemplation of the art content itself. Pop-up museums offer value in the form of inherently time-based wonder and excitement bursts. This model should prompt reflection for the more traditional cultural institutions, who must address the needs and wants of the younger generation. 29Rooms shouldn’t be viewed as a competitor to the National Gallery in any way, rather it should offer an opportunity to reconsider how people visit and experience exhibitions and more generally “consume” art and design.
Finally…
There are many more examples of successful use of the pop-up, spanning across several industries and taking different forms. Various brands and businesses are focusing on putting the value back onto experiences and customers are starting to notice.
In fact, you might have encountered a pop-up in your very own neighbourhood and chances are it was something to remember!
