Table of Contents
A pop-up store is a temporary venue that usually opens for only a few days or weeks. Many industries use this retail model to provide seasonal services or products, but since the last decade many brands have begun to include them in their overall business strategy.
Their objective: to respond to a fast-changing demand, and create a sense of novelty and exclusivity. This is something that digital stores and catalogs could also benefit from imitating.
In the annals of trade history, the origins of pop-up (or 'guerrilla') stores are traced back to centuries ago when merchants travelled from city to city setting up shop in temporary locations.
While it’s true that the concept of a pop-up store is ancient, its modern application has a different slant.
Whereas in olden days transient stall was the only place to obtain certain products, especially fresh groceries, since the twentieth century almost any goods may be accessed from virtually anywhere. Physical pop-up stores emerged as a marketing tool to stimulate new awareness about a well-known brand or a newly released collection; they can also be used as a field trial to sound out a new area.
For example, before opening a Starbucks in a small university town, the chain may run a pop-up store to evaluate its potential success and local consumer behavior there.
Adidas pop-up store in the UK
Another interesting feature of physical pop-up stores is that they can respond to a demand that only occurs at a certain time of year.
Examples include seasonal stores selling Halloween or Christmas products; and pop-up shops opened by fashion and swimwear brands on selected island venues (like music festivals or near beaches), during the summer months when there is a greater influx of tourists and hence demand for such products. For the rest of the year they wouldn’t find it as profitable to keep a fixed store in such locations.
Brands also take advantage of this aspect to generate a sense of exclusivity: it’s seen as a one-off chance to visit such a store, knowing there won’t be any future opportunities to find these particular products.
Even digital giants like Amazon or eBay have used the pop-up strategy to ignite interest in a digital platform. Last year, IKEA presented its new 2019 catalog with a pop-up event in London's Soho, lasting only 5 days.
So it follows that pop-up stores are marketing tools that should form part of your omnichannel strategy and contribute to:
→ This may interest you: Does your company need a paper or a digital catalog?
A pop-up store can be in a unit, a van, a temporary structure or a hotel room: creativity has no limits.
However, there’s one place that no brand should omit from its omnichannel strategy: its digital presence.
How does the pop-up concept apply to online catalogs?
Traditionally, catalogs have been hefty volumes full of product data that marketers wanted to change as little as possible. But nowadays, because demand varies so frequently and it’s so important to grab your buyers’ attention with new releases and events, catalogs are constantly changing.
This means adding new products, variants, temporary collections and exclusive access, across different languages, platforms and markets. Handling all these new references involves a huge amount of extra work, facilitated by product information management software (Not yet familiar with our PIM? Don't fall behind: try it here).
But you also have to communicate these developments effectively.
Penguin Books pop-up store in London
Short-lived digital catalogs are a great marketing tool that supports many options:
At Sales Layer we introduce a new feature that streamlines the design and launch of temporary digital catalogs: our exclusive Instant Catalog connector.
Using the Instant Catalog feature, you can create digital catalogs in express time, choose which products and data you want to display in them, share them with whoever you need to, and boost your sales.
Here's how it works:
→ Try it now! Discover how to create and share instant catalogs with Sales Layer
The best of the pop-up concept: in the event it doesn't go well, the store or catalog can be closed without problems or serious repercussions. The freedom to experiment that a temporary catalog provides you with is very positive: get started with exploring new promotions, products and audiences by creating online catalogs with just a few clicks, using the Sales Layer PIM.
With our 30-day free trial you can launch your first temporary catalog even before convincing yourself you’ll be needing the convenience and speed of this PIM forever.