How a pop-up pops up

What’s the key to successful popup? It’s got to look good, it’s got to feel good and it’s got to be a really good retail experience, Hines says.

‘‘You don’t want something that’s just been thrown together with excess furniture from someone’s house, but equally you don’t want something that is hard to take apart - you need to be able to pop it up somewhere else.’’

A pop-up could happen quite quickly, she said.

‘‘We did a pop-up for a large juice manufacturer that wanted to test a new product but didn’t want anybody to know the brand behind it.

‘‘It took, from start to finish, about six weeks - that included design, conception, installation, drawings, everything.

‘‘And then we did a pop-up for Molenberg, which wanted to get people excited about bread - that took about three months because there were quite a lot of major stakeholders involved.’’

In both instances, the retail space on offer was much bigger than they wanted, so they negotiated with the landlord to take the front 30 metres and put up a wall behind it.

‘‘Because we were activating the space, we convinced the landlord to only pay for the 30 metres we used.’’

A pop-up could be an intensive and stressful experience for a retailer or landlord - especially if it was their first time, Hines said.

‘‘The longer you take to erect a pop up, the more money you’re wasting.

‘‘You’re literally playing with their money and you’re playing with their time, so you’ve got to make sure they feel confident that you can deliver on programme and on budget.’’

They treated the landlord as if they were signing on as a long-term tenant, she said.

‘‘We show them what the concept is going to be and what we are going to do to the space.’’