[POP UP RETAIL]

 [HISTORY]

With a quick search on Google “Pop-Up Retail” will land thousands of articles and praises for this new innovative concept. Shopping for the twentieth second century is what pop-up retail poses to be.  Beginning deeply rooted in Japanese culture and their obsessions of limited edition and exclusive items retail stores would “pop” up typically out of necessity opening for a short amount of time selling out of merchandise closing only to open when stocks were full again. This trend spread like wild-fire, to the Americas and Europe being huge successes in Britain and the United states. Pioneering this movement is a group known as Vacant. It has brought to the table new innovative ideas such as Plane shop and Hotel shop. It is a new spin on rotating retail yet in a permanent space in obviously airports and hotels.

[STRENGTHS & LIMITATIONS]

        Every thing that makes Pop Up retail great is what its greatest short comings are. Small mobile locations are easily over run with customers and run out of product. On the flip side pop up retail poses a discovery challenge to all who are near to explore and discover products typically over looked in permanent malls. Opportunities arise for any retail or service business to reach out to their market base and get exposure.

Location for Pop-Up retail is relative to the product the business is selling. Yet permanent locations previously mentioned like in air ports and hotels would allow pop-ups to share one large space rotating month, week, or day to satisfy the business' need. Location recently has been what has could mainly be said to have propelled the Pop-up craze to new heights. Typically expensive retail spaces with long leases are now being cut for shorter and cheaper leases due to the unoccupied space.

[EXAMPLES]

      Vacant, has come out with a lot of engaging concepts that have entertained the public while exposing them to a new way of shopping, such as the Pop-Up in Shanghai China, where Vacant created a 40 foot sneaker tower. Its intention and implementation was the user would use an iPad to select the shoe they wanted and would be able to watch “shoe angels” scale the tower in a harness to retrieve the shoes. 
[http://www.govacant.com/tower/]

      Puma also employed Vacant to provide a marketing event in china, unifying their involvement with Formula 1 racing. Vacant fashioned a race track from professional R/C racing tiles and bumpers and employed a professional 1/10t scale race car specialist at Tamiya to develop the perfect scale model of a Formula 1 vehicle. The track was laid in the iconic Puma logo and the public took part in a series of races enthralling the masses and exposing them to puma merchandise. [http://www.govacant.com/puma/]