Pop-Down Square Cinema Area, Mike Lim, Shoichi Sado, Olivia Wright and Isobel Davies @PopDownSquare
Good article in The Times this weekend by Matthew-Paris about the future of shopping.
The internet changes how we buy and think, but old memes and behaviours take time to change:
“Thus we suppose that shopping and walking are somehow connected, and Americans suppose that shopping and driving are somehow connected. And everyone thinks a shop is a place — a place in a place; a place you go to and, being a place in a place you go to, will thus be either a specialist shop in a mixed cluster, or a “supermarket” or “department store” with the cluster under one roof. The news that these places can now be virtual, accessed on your screen, hardly needs to be laboured. “
As the role of the shop – a place in a place – changes, so no doubt will the way we search, select and transact real spaces. Does it alter the value of space? Does it change the ability or desire to ‘sell’ in real spaces? Whilst an increasing number of our transactions become virtual, our desire to meet and experience the real world, real things, real people, real products seems more permanent than the ‘form’ this engagement might take.
Thats where WeArePopUp.com can help. By enabling people to say what they mean by a shop – by allowing people to propose what a ‘shop’ should be – for what use, over what time at what price, with what activity with which collaborators.
“But still that hand from the past grips us… [finally] online shops (though not online shopping) will prove — like the out-of-town shopping centres that the internet killed, like the traditional high streets that the shopping centres killed, and like the street vendors and markets that the high streets killed — merely transitional.”
Offline shops are changing but activity, offline shopping, will transition to new forms – the shop is dead, long live the shop.
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