Just as ecommerce once disrupted the time-honored tradition of brick and mortar retail, pop-up stores are seemingly the new, trendy must-haves for ecommerce retailers themselves.
From Amazon to Kate Spade, retailers globally have hopped on the pop-up store hype train.
Not surprising at all, when you factor in the benefits for businesses of driving massive brand awareness and demand generation, in addition to the invaluable treasure trove of feedback and insights gleamed from actual physical interaction with on-ground customers.
But despite being just temporary locations, setting up a pop-up store still requires stellar logistics preparation. Here are five top factors to bear in mind for pop-up store success.
Location
Besides the obvious task of finding a high traffic area and the contractual agreement for the space, it is important to ensure that there will be a reliable wifi connection. As your main business is online, and you want to encourage pop-up visitors to explore your online shop and eventually order directly from it, a fast and secure internet connection is extremely important.
This is also true if you are thinking of a creative campaign and you want to encourage people to share their in-shop experience through social networks.
If you are targeting locations like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Chicago, we recommend you use StoreFront, a sort of Airbnb for pop-up store locations to rent in these cities.
Similarly, if you are looking to rent pop-up store locations in the UK, you might like We Are Pop-Up, a marketplace of temporary locations suitable for pop-up stores.
Staffing
If you hire temporary staff, you need to make sure you have enough time to train them on the details of your brand and products – always easier if you have training programs and materials already in place. Visitors will be experiencing your brand for the first time, at least physically, so you don’t want to harm your ability to properly communicate your brand.
If you decide to repurpose your ecommerce staff for in-shop sales, you need to make sure they are the right people for face-to-face interactions and can handle all the rush time.
Either way, a demo day with friends is highly recommended in order to make sure everything is in place and everyone is delivering as you envision.
Store Design
Pop-up stores seem to be competing in creativity. Think of store design both in terms of furniture and merchandise, but also in terms of the in-shop experience. A well designed pop-up store can win not only the hearts and wallets of customers, but also the news headlines – and we’ve seen it happening for both the good and the bad.
A good source of inspiration is the online jewelry retailer BaubleBar that has opened a few pop-up stores in SoHo in New York. They worked with digital agencies to create the best in-shop customer experience. From a bar serving Godiva cocktails to a website section with user-generated content that encourages visitors to upload photos, BaubleBar has it all.
For more examples, here is a whole Pinterest board with lots of examples of pop-up stores to get design inspiration from.
Stocks
If you mainly sell online, having a pop-up store will disrupt your operations a bit in terms of inventory management. Make sure you have enough stock in the pop-up store, but still be able to sell online without overselling or underselling.
But no worries here, there are tools for that. Once you’ve found a platform or system that can help you manage multiple inventory locations and sell through multiple channels (for example, ecommerce platforms like Shopify/Magento, Amazon and your pop-up store), you’re all set.
Having a strong platform in-place which can help you keep everything automatically in sync, avoid human errors and out-of-stock situations can really help set the foundations for long-term success.
Payments
The decision is yours if you want to:
• offer a full physical retail experience and get orders through a POS system
• encourage customers to purchase directly from your online shop via in-store available computers and tablets
• substitute monetary payments with social media advocacy
A great example would be what Marc Jacobs did earlier this year, when they opened a “Tweet Shop” where people could get samples of the new fragrance Daisy in exchange for tweets hashtagged #MJDaisyChain.
If done right, a pop-up store can create massive buzz for your online shop, and truly take your business to the next level.
Are you ready to join the pop-up revolution?
Adelina Peltea is Vice President of Marketing for TradeGecko