Nov 04, 2009 08:57 AM

The Rise in Pop-up Stores

By Home Experts Team

In today’s tough economic environment, retailers wary of new store openings, are trying something different – pop-up stores in select cities. The latest trend, which isn’t entirely new but growing in popularity, involves a shop that opens for a few days in a major city or mall and is gone after a predetermined amount of time – sometimes after only a few days.

According to Retail Traffic Magazine, Target (IMRE client) is considered by many to be the granddaddy of pop-ups. To introduce Isaac Mizrahi’s new fashion design for women, the discount chain opened a 1,500-square-foot pop-up in Rockefeller Center. For Christmas one year, it tied a 220-foot barge with bull’s-eye-shaped boughs to a pier in the Hudson River.

Another early innovator according to Retail Traffic Magazine was Levi’s, which occupied a space for six weeks in 1999 in New York. New York-based Pompei AD, an Icelandic maker of cold-weather outerwear introducing its brand to the U.S. market, designed the pop-up space.

As the 2009 holiday season approaches, we expect to see more and more retailers hopping on the bandwagon of the pop-up store. Here are a few we’ve heard about already:

Toys “R” Us – Toy seller Toys “R” Us is expected to open up to 70 pop-up stores on a national basis in markets previously occupied by defunct rival KB Toys, according to Welkis, whose firm worked with Toys “R” Us on two such locations in New Jersey. Toys “R” Us expects to close its pop-up stores in mid-January.
Nine West – Footwear retailer Nine West has also been looking to do more pop-ups under its Bannister Shoes name. The chain uses the temporary locations to sell leftover merchandise.
Hickory Farms – Hickory Farms started running only-temporary stores and kiosks about 15 years ago when it realized almost all of its business was around the holidays. This year this chain is expected to once again open pop-up stores for the holiday season.
Calendar Club – Calendar Holdings is hoping to sell 6 million units this year through its retail shops, called Calendar Club, and Web site www.calendars.com during its peak season — October through January. Pop-up stores have already started its traditional holiday appearance in malls.

The advantages of pop-up stores are numerous. In addition to the added sense of urgency these stores give consumers to visit them, other advantages of the pop-up stores for retailers include: