Want to give your customers a little brand experience? Then open up a store. You’re not a retailer? Who cares…. Companies are using retail space in imaginative ways to, quite literally, give their customers a taste of their products. Isaac Mizrahi launched his range for the Target chain in a special store, Song - the value airline – announced their launch with a SoHo store where you could even try the seats and eat the food!!
Last year Spanish zapatos firm Camper launched a temporary store in London’s Notting Hill that allowed people to write what ever they liked on the walls and ceiling. The store has become so popular it remains open with comments and poetry in two dozen languages. Adidas this summer celebrated the Olympics by opening an ‘exhibition’ in a store on the fashionable Newburgh Street in London. The exhibition offered an ‘Olympic Archive 1928-1992′ which included Jesse Owen’s spikes and Muhammad Ali’s boxing boots. The store also sold limited edition sports apparel.
TrendWatching’s September newsletter features several examples of this trend. The Meow Mix Company, maker of dry cat food, closed the doors of its Meow Mix Café, after just one week of retailing on 5th Ave in Manhattan. The 3,500-square-foot POP UP STORE served up culinary delights specially designed for cats. Low cost carrier easyJet launched the easyJet BeachClub in Bloemendaal aan Zee, The Netherlands in July. Later this month MTV in collaboration with Adidas, Levi’s and Sony Ericsson, MTV will tour German cities for a month.
Meanwhile Apple plans to roll out 10 ‘Mini Stores’ later this month to bring extra coverage to regions that already have a main store. The design of the mini-stores will mimic their larger cousins, including wall graphics and furniture but forego the usual “home” and “pro” sections and instead focus on applications: video, photo, music. A fourth new section will appear in the stores: “school life” for the campus mini stores and “business” or “iLife” for the other minis.
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Hey! What about the creative genius who thought up this concept, russell miller, of govacant.com…. all these companies that you mentioned copied miller’s original concept, pushing “pop-up stores” to the front of retail trends…
September 19th, 2004 at 6:32 pm
From Urban Junkies: new temporary new shop called… Splendid.
Like the name suggests, lots of splendid things are going on down at Splendid. The Commercial Street space is selling a host of weird/wonderful artwork, fashion gems and accessories by young designers including pornographic cross-stitch kits, lovesick souvenirs and pig tusked pendants.
October 2nd, 2004 at 10:38 am
Paper Magazine’s temporary store will be open through Oct. 8 at Marshall Fields at 111 N. State Street Chicago.
“Vacant” is the original traveling “pop-up” retail concept that showcases an exclusive range of one-of-a- kind, hard-to-find and strictly limited-edition products from brands and emerging designers that will make its Chicago debut at Marshall Field’s State Street store.
Paper Magazine celebrates its 20th anniversary with a retrospective display at Marshall Field’s State Street store.
October 2nd, 2004 at 11:34 am
On 19 October Umbro and Shotgun will open a week long store in London’s East End. The featured items will be pieces developed in collaboration with fashion designers Kim Jones and Dirk Bikkembergs
http://www.joshrubin.com/coolhunting/archives/2004/10/umbro_guerilla.html
October 11th, 2004 at 2:36 am
From their press release:
STAMFORD, Conn. – Oct. 6, 2004 – Crown Royal, North America’s premier whisky, announces one month of free haircuts at the Crown Royal Barbershop in New York City.
The Crown Royal Barbershop is a custom-tailored experience designed to bring the American barbershop to life through the eyes of the brand. Open seven days a week, the Crown Royal Barbershop features local barbers, three chairs and a social area. The nearly 1,000 square feet of retail space is decorated in purple and gold, Crown Royal’s signature colors, and is open to consumers 21 years and older on a first come, first serve basis. On select evenings, the space will host private parties complete with cocktails and entertainment.
The Crown Royal Barbershop will be open daily Oct. 15 through Nov. 15, from noon – 9:00 p.m. and staffed by barbers from Levels Barbershop of New York City.
Located at 199 Lafayette at Cleveland Place in the Soho/Nolita district of lower Manhattan, the Crown Royal Barbershop aims to open new avenues of communication with consumers. “Crown Royal is reaching the urban trendsetter through new and unique channels that engage the consumer,” says Michael Fernandez, senior multicultural brand manager, for Crown Royal. “The Crown Royal Barbershop is an interactive billboard. The street level visibility is powerful and the barbershop experience inside is akin to performance art.”
The Crown Royal Barbershop is the first creation for Location NYC, Inc., who provides the space for 30 day limited engagements to companies seeking to offer a special brand environment. Location is a new exciting media experience combining a street level billboard, interactive brand gallery, brand events, sampling and marketing opportunities.
October 19th, 2004 at 2:29 pm
Stores operated by Vacant, which started appearing four years ago, feature clothes, sneakers and accessories by up-and-coming designers and by established brands like Puma in a leased space that never stays longer than four weeks. The guerrilla store rejects other traditional retail practices, like putting price tags on their products or offering to help customers. Drawing on a database of 1.6 million people worldwide, Miller and his crew shoot off a few e-mail messages on a new store opening and then let word of mouth do the rest.”It doesn’t go to the mass market, but it does create more brand awareness and product awareness,” Malhotra said. For major brands like Adidas and Levi’s, the short-term store is a way to augment their mainstream image by offering something limited and exclusive to people they hope are trendsetters…
http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/10/24/business/popups25.html
October 25th, 2004 at 1:10 pm
From Influx:
The pop-up store craze has now got out of control, now Peroni, the Italian beer brand is planning one for it’s UK re-launch. The store will be located in London’s fashionable Knightsbridge district at 202 Sloane Street. However, the concept seems to lack a little depth. It will be open for four weeks, for two weeks it will tease the opening with “opening soon” signs and for the final two weeks the store will just showcase a beer bottle on a pedestal.
For more: http://influx.bssp.com/index.php?id=312
But Don’t go here http://www.influx.com – as we did….
March 9th, 2005 at 1:09 am