This holiday season online retail giant eBay will be going analog – making the leap from the web to real-life with a pop-up shop set to open November 20th in New York City.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve chronicled the rise of brands creating pop-up stores to earn street cache. In an interesting twist of art imitating advertising, Amsterdam-based artist Laurence Aegerter has created the Opening Soon/Opening Now series of pop-up events and stores that address gentrification within Amsterdam (part of the Red A.I.R. program). Staging the project within a former brothel over the course of the past year, Aegerter has transformed the space into a library, a Turkish snack bar, a golf club and a soon to be functioning public swimming pool among others.
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Please Stop This [...]

We live in a time of instability. There’s the economy, political strife, and the use of pop-up everything by marketers everywhere (see wedding chapels, apartments, dance parties, and stores). Well now there’s the pop-up agency.
Digital agency Proximity BBDO’s Belgium outpost has designed ‘The Farm,’ a program for hiring new talent. Seemingly inspired by the recruiting practices of major league sports, it is the solution to their struggles finding talent amidst high local agency competition.
The “agency-within-an-agency” nurtures 12 recruits who will get the opportunity to work on some of the agency’s top accounts. During their time there they will undergo an [...]

It would seem like one of the year’s biggest understatements to say that consumers are hesitant to go shopping at the moment. Not only  are the fashion conscious set reluctant to spend any money on new threads, but there’s a general sense that it’s irresponsible to be thinking of one’s wardrobe while the entire country appears to be teetering on the verge of financial collapse. So how can retailers take some of the sting out of spending?
By making customers feel like they’re at a BBQ with friends.

This past weekend in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, designer Mary Meyer teamed up with local brands [...]

Furniture company Wintercheck Factory offers designs they hope will appeal to customers who are seeking “a unique product that is sturdily made, intelligently designed and moderately priced.” Their pieces are modern to a tee; sharp, clean, minimal, and bright. What differentiates Wintercheck Factory from any other number of furniture companies that proffer high quality modern products is the effort they are exerting to reach their customers. Although their prices put them far beyond Ikea territory, they endeavor to offer both beautiful design that is reasonably economical (reasonable, that is, for a small, design-conscious furniture company) by skipping traditional retail altogether, [...]

For many people, this years economic woes have caused would-be vacationers to seek out alternative retreats. However, for those in New York City, this Sunday the Israeli Ministry of Tourism in cooperation with the Tel Aviv Yafo Centennial Administration and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be bringing Israel to New York by turning the area of Central Park near the Naumberg Bandshell into an artificial Tel Aviv beachfront, complete with a 1,300 square foot sand section featuring chairs and parasols- allowing visitors to soak up a faux-authentic Mediterranean tan.
In addition to live music and entertainment, visitors will be [...]

Hot on the heels of 303 GRAND’s pop-up wedding chapel event this June (the first of it’s kind), the Grand Opening storefront on 139 Norfolk street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side is also offering the betrothed a chance to have their dream event- “Vegas Style”. Those curious about the endeavor can visit Grand Opening’s website at kickstarter.com , an interactive page where the owners of the space not just give you a tour, but also let viewers know just what they would get when they signup for a wedding at Grand Opening.
Some of the exciting things promised include live Internet [...]

You’ve heard a lot on PSFK about pop-up shops, but this month, the 303 GRAND event space and rotating store front in Brooklyn will be sponsoring the first ever pop-up wedding chapel. The concept was the brain-child of 303 co-founder Ruth Heronemus, who upon a visit to a New York court house discovered that those wishing to have a quick, no-mess wedding often had to wait on epic Kafka-esque lines along with those paying delinquent fines (or much worse). It was then that Heronemus had the idea to create an event where couples could have a  small and unique wedding [...]

Axe, makers of sprays and body wash aimed at men ages 17-24 internationally, will be embarking this summer on a questionable new project- creating a season-long Axe themed nightclub inside the Hampton’s New York club Dune.
The club will feature Axe products in the restrooms, Axe themed drinks, and what a PR rep for the company described as “subtle branding” on the DJ Booth, menu, and valet tickets. When asked why Axe is taking on such a chancy endeavour (their main demographic has been hit the hardest by the recession, and it’s been remarked that many are unable to visit the [...]

Opening this Sunday at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, Queens is a summer long project called The University of Trash by Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman. Drawing from utopian ideals and radical urban projects undertaken since the 1960s, the artists will create an installation that functions as a temporary, makeshift University – hosting courses, lectures, presentations, and workshops. A Free Skool program will operate within the University, offering the public the opportunity to propose their own courses – open and free for all sign up and attend throughout the duration of the exhibition.
Throughout the exhibition there will be [...]

The Museum of Modern Art has put up a temporary museum annex inside the large Atlantic Pacific subway station in Brooklyn, New York. Throughout the complex, reproductions of the MoMA’s collection have been placed along platforms and passageways for anyone to view 24/7.
PSFK went to check out this pop up gallery, and found it to be a welcome addition to the station, adding a sense of place to what would normally be a space to be rushed though on the way to somewhere else. Subway riders entering the station displayed looks of confusion which morphed into expressions of delight as [...]

This past weekend Gap and Pantone opened up a pop-up shop on 5th Ave in the company’s ‘concept store’ space. The shop will sell t-shirts in a range of Pantone hues. Pantone recently unveiled its pick for the 2009 color of the year called Mimosa (14-0848) Pantone describes the color as having seven characteristics, optimistic, hopeful, reassuring, warm, cheerful, radiant, and versatile which they feel are the most relevant to the next twelve months. Gap has issued a Mimosa hued shirt that is only available at the store on 5th. Sounds like the rest of the line will show up [...]

Can I ask all the people who work at advertising and marketing agencies who read this site to stop advising their clients to create pop-up stores. News that Pepsi are about to launch a pop-up store in New York reminds me that this style of marketing activity has become a cliche. The world is flooded with pop-up stores no-one wants or needs..
Sure, it makes your clients spend some more money with your agency when you convince your clients via PowerPoint that a pop-up store would bring their brands to life-like-life – but to be honest the world does not care [...]