Millions of new retail shops

by Nicholas Russell

We walked from the main part of the shopping centre, to the Pop Up Village. We passed clean, orderly stores – shoe retailers, a lingerie shop, a café. Throbbing deep house music gradually replaced the ambient jazz. Crossing the threshold into the village, everything changed.

A store with a giant boom box painted and objects made from retired jeans. Another space had a pastoral forest on the wall, an old leather couch, and a phonograph playing. I looked back at the mall behind, and felt I stumbled on something creative. Truly special and unique…”

Boulevard Berlin
In April 2014, We Are Pop Up launched The Pop Up Village at Boulevard Berlin, in Germany. Boulevard Berlin sits in a pre-war building in the upscale Stieglitz neighbourhood. The name comes from a public thoroughfare through the shopping centre that connects Schloßstraße with Harry Bresslau Park.

Corio – the owner of shopping centre – is one of Europe’s most forward-thinking property groups. Gerard Groener saw early on that the European retail leasing market demands new thinking. Consumer incomes remain under pressure, and brick-and-mortar retailers suffer from the explosive growth in online retail.

From London with love
Working with Corio, the We Are Pop Up team developed the concept From London With Love. Eight independent British fashion retailers coming to Berlin, trading for a few months in one of Berlin’s busiest districts. For the retailers, From London With Love represented the opportunity for British entrepreneurs and SMEs to test continental Europe’s hottest retail market.

When we started We Are Pop Up, it was difficult for London-based small businesses to find short-term prime retail property in London. Foreign geographies were unthinkable. Now, there are over 1,000 short-term retail spaces available in London, and our brands are traveling to Berlin.

The world is flatter
Ten years ago, Thomas Friedman wrote The World Is Flat – a sweeping overview of globalisation.

“In a flat world, where value is increasingly created, and complex problems solved, by whom you connect with.”

In the decade since, software platforms emerged, directly connecting people to create new opportunities in specific sectors. Thanks to AirBNB, the self-catering holiday market now rivals multinational hotel chains. Kickstarter has channelled $1B in funding to independent creative producers. In the last year alone, the price of a BitCoin has increased 10% month-on-month. Furthermore, thousands of other platforms – across every sector – chew away at structural inefficiencies and archaic processes.

The rise of lean retail
In January 2012, Dr. Alastair Moore and I sat in the Crown pub on Monmouth Street, discussing what an AirBNB for retail property would look like. The idea gave millions of brands and entrepreneurs the opportunity to experiment with prime retail spaces, from High Streets to shopping centres. At the time, empty shops dotted every London neighbourhood. Old retailers like Jessops fell, and nothing new rose in their place.

Then, Homeslice’s food truck turned into a Neal’s Yard restaurant. Fashion boutique Wandering Minds started with six weeks in BOXPARK Shoreditch, and now has three stores – two in London and one in Berlin.

Independent brands renew the shopping centre
From London With Love launched on a Thursday evening. Moore and I leaned over a railing and toasted champagne. Through We Are Pop Up, eight independent British brands launched shops in an upscale Berlin shopping centre.

Moore looked around, surveying the village. Compared with the other shops in the centre, our retailers had an artisan quality. Murals painted on walls. Vintage furniture. Products not found anywhere else in Berlin.

“Now this is cool,” Moore said.

Pop up shops rise to the challenge

Pop ups are now a mainstay of retail life, said the Financial Times this week. They asked our CEO Nick Russell to estimate the number of pop up shops in London. Read his reply and the FT’s take on the rise of the pop ups…

Pop up stores rise to challenge of reviving retail, says Financial Times

Tinned Bananas at BOXPARK – go nuts!

Tinned Bananas is a new breed of women’s fashion. We make crazy designs and print them onto stretched fabric to give you a different style of clothing!

Our prints are our own, they are who we are and they are what define us. We take inspiration from raw funk to gritty soul and we fill our prints with untapped energy. One thing’s for sure: their explosive personality will blow your mentality!

Taking the next step in our creative journey we have recently opened our flagship store at the world’s first pop-up mall, BOXPARK.

We want there to be a soulful feeling in everything we do and ensure there is a constant flow of good energy in our work! Here at our pop-up store at BOXPARK, funk is king. We want you to open your mind and bring yourself to life and our store at BOXPARK allows us to do just that!

Our retail space is open for 3 months, from the 1^st November to 1^st February!

During our time at BOXPARK we want to engage with our target audience as much as possible. We will be offering a range of in-store discounts and hosting a number of special events! Customers will also have the chance to purchase exclusive products that are available only to BOXPARK customers.

BOXPARK is a great concept and is perfect for companies like ours! It is simple and a great way for start up brands to find their feet, have fun with their customers and create a buzz around their brand! Owner and founder of BOXPARK, Roger Wade, is a key figure in supporting smaller brands. He is currently leading the battle to reduce business rates in the area, which would give companies a better chance to succeed in this tough industry and ultimately, help rejuvenate our high streets!

BOXPARK is more than a shopping experience. Located in one of the most happening places in East London, it is a society made up of creative ideas that continues to push boundaries, offering customers something new week in week out. It is the start of something new.

We are always listening and looking for the opportunity to talk to people so please don’t stay quiet, come and see some our weird and wonderful prints, visit us at BOXPARK, Shoreditch. x

Tinned Bananas at BOXPARK – go nuts!

Find Tinned Bananas at BOXPARK »

www.tinnedbananas.com

CouCo’s pop-up shop – The creative concept company behind PLAYN Eyewear

Meet CouCo- our new creative concept company:

CouCo: Introducing sustainable boutique brands and a variety of products all of which are handmade and new to the UK. Co-Founded by cousins Lisa and Tess.

“What’s special about CouCo is our hands on approach in selecting the brands we bring on board. We make a point of meeting the makers in person and on location to confirm that we share the same values and principles. This is the only way we can vouch for the products and all that they stand for.” Tess, CouCo Co-founder

CouCo proudly presents: PLAYN– maker of eco-friendly, handcrafted, designer eyewear in collaboration with CM AOX, creators of revolutionary gadget and fashion accessories, which are produced and hand finished in London.

After three successful pop-up shops in East London, including the running of the “smallest shop in the world” they have returned to Boxpark this time for a six-week pop-up shop!

We would now like to share and celebrate the success we have had in the past months and would like to cordially invite you:

Join us for drinks and music by Bailey Intabeats on Thursday 14^th Nov 6pm-9pm PLAYN Eyewear at Boxpark Unit 17, Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6GY

If you can’t make Thursday, no problem come by another day, we will be there till Sunday 24^th November!

Merci,
Lisa & Tess

We interviewed Couco last summer about their pop-up journey.

Read about their adventures in short-term space »

UCL’s Pop Up Shop LAUNCHBOX says ‘goodbye’ at BOXPARK Shoreditch

The journey of UCL Launch Box at Boxpark Shoreditch has been one of great successes!

We would love to share the story with you one last time and bid farewell to the incredible innovations that have sped through the pop up shop over the past 6 months. Please join us on the evening of Thursday, November 14th!

RSVP here for a spot: https://lauchboxclosingparty.eventbrite.co.uk/

Tie Dye High Five gets tie-tastic at Boxpark Shoreditch

We’ve just come from a tie-tastic session at the high-energy #tiedyehighfive pop-up workshop at Boxpark.

It was so fun and we loved the style. The walls were adorned with examples of dying techniques on a massive (super colourful!) scale. From the ‘heart’ to the ‘spiral’, ‘bullseye’ and ‘crumple’, we were shown how to get the desired effect, and then squeezed the Dylon to our heart’s content!

Follow #tiedyehighfive on Twitter to see some great results from the sold-out weekend workshops. And check out our workshop on the We Are Pop Up Pinterest Board: http://m.pinterest.com/wearepopup/pop-up-shop-tiedyehighfive-boxpark-from-neonstash/

Pop up shop interview: A Monozygotic Temple

We first met Tida and Lisa Finch via their entry for the BOXPARK Shoreditch “Free Pop-up Competition”. Their great photographs and unique jewelry were eye-catching at first sight. Now, about a month into their free winter pop-up, we paid Tida a visit at Finchittida Finch HQ. We are very pleased to (re)announce our pop-up shop interview:

Finchittida Finch at BOXPARK Shoreditch

For all of us over here at We Are Pop Up HQ, it was very exciting to have a chance to spend some time with one of the very first businesses that we put into a shop. In support of the forward-thinking team at BOXPARK (@BOXPARK) we were able to give an excellent opportunity to a great brand. For Finchittida Finch (@FINCHITTIDA) Unit 7 at BOXPARK Shoreditch is the first physical space to host their line of jewelry and home wares. Tida happily shared her enthusiasm about their pop-up, so we started by discussing some of the best aspects of setting up a brand as a destination and what it’s like to be at BOXPARK.

Finchittida Finch seems to be right at home. Tida told us, “We love it, we feel like it’s our HQ. Being in Shoreditch is great and the East London line has just opened, so travel is easy.” And some of their online customers have come to visit as well, “when we had our launch party, a few customers came especially to meet us and check out our products in real life. It was really great to meet them. This shop has given us the opportunity to extend our brand and products to people who just walk by. And sharing BOXPARK’s newsletter announcements with our social media networks has been really valuable. BOXPARK has been supportive and quite a lot of people have come in from their announcements alone.”

Their winter pop-up, titled The Monozygotic Temple, has offered Finchittida Finch a new way of getting to know customers – by watching them relate and respond to their products in front of their eyes. By running the shop themselves, they have had the opportunity to answer questions, monitor their demographic and request customer feedback quickly.

Even though they had cause to worry with the forecast of a post-Christmas slump, sales have been going well. Tida explained, “because our products are really affordable and unique it hasn’t been a problem. We have learned a lot from watching people in the shop; most are shocked at the massive [necklaces], and say ’I love them but I couldn’t wear them.’ ” Nevertheless, the large works are intricate and beautiful, ideal for costume designers and those looking for a striking addition to their collection.

We asked whether the feedback had changed the production line at all, “It’s really important to keep the balance. The larger-scale products grab attention, but the smaller ones are affordable and fit with a variety of styles. We’ve learned a lot about how to balance our line and have realized that we need to offer a real range with every collection. This has been the kind of learning we couldn’t have achieved without being in a shop near our customers.”

Tida and Lisa are a two person team, coordinating everything from the laser-cutting of their jewelry to promotion, as well as managing their social media accounts, running the shop, doing admin and providing customer service to both their online and offline customers. And they just recently graduated from university.

Keeping both an online and offline presence in harmony and thriving is something that even the most established and stable brands have trouble with. Tida’s solution for Finchittida Finch is to find great stockists in the UK and internationally that can help get their designs more widely distributed, while also using pop-ups to connect to new parts of London.

“It’s been hard work, but absolutely worth it and introduced us to pop-ups. Before I never would have wanted to take a shop. But because of this opportunity, we’ve really got a taste for it.”

For us at We Are Pop Up, visualizing Finchittida Finch at BOXPARK didn’t take much effort. Their name alone was intriguing, their story unique, their products innovative and it is obvious that they care deeply about what they make – from design to development. We always feel fortunate for the opportunity to connect with the people behind an innovative brand that also manage to triumph an entrepreneurial spirit. Lisa and Tida are an inspiring duo – sticking to their roots and making their vision real.

You can find Finchittida Finch on their website, their blog, and the ASOS marketplace. And connect to them on Facebook and Twitter @FINCHITTIDA.

You can also read their December feature as one of BOXPARK’s X-mas staff pick features.

Pop up shop interview: Think Inside The BOXPARK

On November 9th 2012, we began taking entries for a competition we were hosting with BOXPARK. We had never seen a Tweet generate so much interest as:

“Enter to win 3 months FREE at BOXPARK! http://wearepopup.com/boxpark via @wearepopup”

As is clear by the number of great contestants submitting applications, BOXPARK is an incredibly innovative place to be and an exciting challenge for brands and retailers. BOXPARK has opened up a powerful and valuable opportunity for an independent business – at no rental cost and proven to us that they are willing to mix things up and see what happens. We love that attitude, and were curious about what the current BOXPARK retailers had to say about life in a shipping container in Shoreditch, and what advice they had to give to someone about to move in.

King from Thai And Lao Street Food (@THAIandLAO).

Thai and Lao Street Food, located on the upper deck in unit 53, started 12 years previously on Brick Lane serving honest and homemade food-to-order out of a van. Manager King explained that the restaurant has always been and will always remain a family-run, owned and managed business.

Thai and Lao Street Food moved into BOXPARK four months before and continues to uphold powerful tenets: keep it simple, focus on your product, and keep it fresh. Thai and Lao never pre-cooks anything, as King mentioned, “We get people who come in and expect us to already have food on the go, or just hand them something. We say, ‘there’s nothing to try until you order it!’ ” Whilst this style of food service might surprise some customers, it also helps expose new and unique attitudes to the local community.

King shared that being in the heart of Shoreditch has been encouraging, “the people are great – they know about food. We are surrounded by a mix of everything from artists to business owners. It’s young and fresh, and you really have everything in one place.” As we met with more BOXPARK businesses, King’s sentiment was echoed and proved itself as one of the keys to understanding exactly how BOXPARK Shoreditch operates.

Find Thai And Lao at BOXPARK even today, and connect with them on Facebook and on Twitter.

Aleks from Abuze London (@abuzeldn).

Next, we met with Aleks, the owner and creative director from Abuze London, in Unit 35. We learned about Abuze London’s 10-year history, conceived by a group of friends as a way to turn their passion for graffiti and street-art into quality crafted clothing. Aleks explained, “we turned our life around to start this business. We were a large crew of graffiti writers and we came together to invest in a product.” Their shop at BOXPARK was the first physical location. And Aleks explained why, “It can be incredibly hard to find investment for designer brands that are managed by designers. It was a real struggle to get the investment together to take this space at BOXPARK… but now we are one of the top stores.”

Abuze London’s designs and artwork are heavily steeped in a history of London Street Art, and the traditions of stenciling, cut-out and spray paint could be traced throughout the shop’s fit-out. We asked if it was challenging to consider interior, physical space, having been dedicated to an online platform. Aleks replied, “Not really. We’re designers and artists, designing the space was easy. Some friends built our display units and we were lucky to be able to make the furniture and space exactly how we wanted it. The vision wasn’t the hard part… finding the money was the problem.”

Despite the extreme challenges associated with setting up shop for the first time, Abuze London was able to increase their sales and brand awareness with their physical space. When asked what advice he would give to a business moving into a physical space for the first time, Aleks replied, “It’s such a huge task. Be driven, and don’t take no for an answer. You’ll get knocked back, but you just have to take it and keep moving forward.”

Visit Abuze London’s online shop and connect on Facebook and on Twitter.

Amanda from Original Penguin (@penguineurope) and FARAH Vintage (@farahvintage).

Amanda co-managed Original Penguin in Unit 11 and FARAH Vintage in Unit 12, curating their re-fits and product selection. For Amanda, Shoreditch provides the ideal opportunity to showcase vintage-inspired clothing with modern sensibilities. As Amanda explained, “a cool big brand doesn’t necessarily drive traffic to an area. The product and vibe are way more important. It’s about matching your environment well.” While concepts like “price-point” and “targeting” are important, businesses succeed most by understanding the style and desires of the locale.

Developing a business around these ideas can be difficult, especially as customer and community trends may shift rapidly, or change altogether. With Original Penguin and FARAH, Amanda was able to use this to her advantage, and built into their BOXPARK strategy is an ever-changing interior. “It’s great, we can come in here late in an evening or on low-traffic days. Because the spaces are so compact, we can re-arrange and re-develop the space very quickly. Being small makes it easy to switch it all up.” This also creates opportunities for engagement – with every change comes community announcements and updates.

We asked Amanda why BOXPARK in particular seemed to stand-out as a destination, “It’s surrounded by creativity, and BOXPARK is very open to trying new things out.” We started to understand how adaptation and moving quickly is embedded at the core of BOXPARK, and why shipping containers in particular seemed such a simple way to facilitate these fundamental tenets.

Visit Original Penguin’s website and connect on Facebook and on Twitter.

Visit FARAH Vintage’s website and connect on Facebook and on Twitter

Ross Thompson from PUMA Twentyone (@puma).

We took an opportunity to do an old-fashioned Q&A with Ross with great results.

What is your position at PUMA, and what would we find at PUMA’s BOXPARK shop?

My position is Head of Retail for Capitalize Ltd, and we operate the PUMA Twentyone store at Boxpark. Built around the Boxpark store unit number 21, PUMA Twentyone will see stock refreshed every 21 days and promotions taking place at 21 day intervals. The concept is illustrated in-store with a menu and countdown board at the entrance, which lists the 21 special and limited editions footwear styles currently available and when new stock arrives.

What is the primary advantage of being a pop-up?

Retailing from a shipping container is a unique concept and it gives businesses the opportunity to display their products in an unusual way. High streets throughout the UK are all very similar and it is important to have something new and exciting for customers to see. These are key offers of pop-up.

What are some of the best aspects of being at BOXPARK?

It is interesting seeing how other brands showcase themselves, and to be successful the store has to continue to be exciting to customers. Being amongst brands who are all trying different ways to appeal to customers promotes a healthy rivalry and pushes each retailer to show their best side.

What are the advantages of being in Shoreditch?

Shoreditch is such a creative area and is really on-point when it comes to fashion. Having PUMA in Shoreditch helps us showcase the brand to people who care about fashion. The store is continuously visited by fashion students, fashion bloggers, and people in fashion PR. A unique concept like PUMA Twentyone has helped us receive many good reviews online by the media.

What advice would you give to someone setting up at BOXPARK for the first time?

The main challenge of the BOXPARK store is the space. To keep customers interested, stock must be on consistent rotation. Many customers come back frequently, and we would lose them if the store never changed appearance. The store has to be simple and refreshed regularly. Even though big brands might not choose to change their flagship stores as regularly, adaptability is one of the core strengths of the BOXPARK units.

Visit PUMA’s website, on Facebook and on Twitter.

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Maybe it is the proximity and uniformity of the containers, or the fact that the entire mall feels tucked snugly against the Shoreditch Overground Station. What we know for certain is that BOXPARK elegantly captures the potential of what ‘pop-up’ can mean for a businesses: an opportunity to show ingenuity by getting great results within serious constraints, a requirement to be fast and flexible – to think on your toes, to take risks, and most importantly to see restrictions as opportunities.

Many thanks to Abuze London, Thai and Lao Street Food, Penguin Originals, FARAH Vintage, and PUMA for being generous with your time.

And special thank you to Claudia, Karen and Agee @BOXPARK for helping set up the interviews and supporting the competition.

#SMWPOPUP

“How Social Media Powered The Pop-up”

For Social Media Week (September 24th – 28th in London), Eventbrite

As part of Social Media Week, EventbriteUK (@briteuk) hosted 60+ attendees at Engine to discuss why pop-ups use social media, how to market big new ideas and what growth really looks like in a world gone digital. We heard from a great panel composed of major London pop-up entrepreneurs:

Andrew Swain – social media consultant at Boxpark (@boxpark),

Alice Hodge – co-founder of The Art Of Dining (@artofdiningldn)

Max Bergius – founder & editor of Art Wednesday (@artwednesday)

Sam Michel – founder of Chinwag (@chinwag)

Daniel Young – founder of Young and Foodish (@youngandfoodish)

For pop-ups, the problems with promotion and consumer traction are obvious: they are intrinsically ephemeral, underground, inconsistent, and often invisible to the naked eye (read: invite only). They are projects built from scratch by courageous and inventive individuals keen to bring something new into the world. Conversely, they’re often unable to afford the luxuries of promotion, mass-marketing, or any paid advertising whatsoever. We heard from the panel that proper (paid) promotion can actually damage reputations if the goal is to find an authentic and authentically engaged consumer base.

Enter Social Media.

“Everyone on Twitter Is Into Crochet”

The consensus in the room was that user/consumer/fan-generated content is the most valuable to both identifying and growing a dedicated base of customers. Rather than filling Facebook with every little announcement, or feeding Twitter with flippant information, success comes from re-posting Instagram photos, sharing positive consumer feedback and reinforcing messages of gratitude. While these strategies seem fairly obvious, we were given plenty of counter-examples where Pinterest had been used to mask commercial interests, verbose blogs fell on deaf ears and scattershot over-use of Facebook and Twitter isolated everyone.

As Daniel Young put it, “Everyone on Twitter is into crochet.” This doesn’t mean that any crochet business will de-facto succeed through Tweets alone, but rather that the challenge is to bring new and useful information and projects to the platform. Take the time to tell the right people about them, and then take them on a journey. Daniel found a collaborator in Edible Experiences, and they often share and support each-other’s content.

For Alice Hodge, the journey starts with ‘being real’, which is facilitated primarily through Twitter and Instagram. The accurate buzz word here is “oblique.” Tweeting about mis-steps and antics, coupled with Instagram photos of what happens behind-the-scenes can do a lot to bring humor, life and humanity to a new business. Andrew and most of the panel echoed the value of re-posting Instagram images and other user-generated content as a way to build a reputation directly through relationships, rather than ‘pitching’ anything at all.

Email = Workhorse

So how do you connect directly with your base to promote events, sell tickets, generate a buzz or announce a new feature? And how to do you measure retention vs. interest when social network stats are only as good as the last week’s activity?

For Max Bergius, email equivocates best. Because it is so direct, Art Wednesday sees the most monetization come from direct emails. MailChimp is the favorite tool for scheduling and building email campaigns (we use it at WAPU for our mailing-list and love it). As social networks grow larger daily, getting a signal through the noise can be quite the challenge. But email – set apart from networks and inherently personal – is a great way to find and keep your ‘sticky’ supporters.

Quality, not G+

Of the many platforms supported and praised for their ability to help connect and network users, Hootsuite and Tweetdeck were praised as tools to manage and schedule social updates (they focus on Twitter and Facebook). Path, Highlight and Banjo were mentioned as good personal networking tools. Drupal and WordPress were the blogging favorites.

We would like to throw in Shhmooze as an up-and-comer which helps you find people from your networks at events hosted by Shhmooze, Eventbrite and MeetUp.

The consensus was that Google Plus and the complicated integration of Google Plus Local and Google Plus Groups makes it more of a headache than a tool. When resources are already stretched across development, outreach and service, convoluted software that changes frequently is the most likely to drop off.

“If corporates can get out of the way… we’ll have a great time”

The most poignant question of the session came at the end of the event, when Sam Michel had a chance to discuss the role of big brands amidst the pop-up phenomenon. The title quote is his, issued after explaining the potential and exciting opportunity for entrepreneurs and brands to partner around offering large-scale, authentic experiences. Brands can bring financial support and capability, where entrepreneurs bring authenticity and a true connection to consumers.

This is most likely to work if the brand is just barely visible. We imagine meaningful or quiet product-placements, rather than big noisy ad-campaigns. Most brands now don’t seem to cop to the idea, so maybe they just need to be taught. Connecting with true pop-up entrepreneurs is a great opportunity for brands to authentically connect with their consumers – as we see in The Art Of Dining’s new Tradicional project.

Many thanks to Katie McPhee and Eventbrite for facilitating this fascinating conversation. (And for not forcing everyone in attendance to wear big orange shirts.)

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Watch the live stream

Event overview and speakers: http://eventbriteatsmwldn12.eventbrite.com

Host: http://www.theenginegroup.com