Pop-up stores in season
These merchants are temporary by tradition
Temporary and often trendy by nature, seasonal mall merchants and kiosk vendors seem unlikely to ever become part of a holiday tradition.
But don’t tell that to the owners of Callisters Christmas.
The New Berlin-based seller of ornaments, run by three sisters in leased storefront space inside major regional malls in the metro Milwaukee area and Appleton, has developed regular customers over more than two decades as a winter holidays products retailer even though its stores pop up for only a short time each year.
Now, at Christmastime annually, people come in seeking tree ornaments that mark the years of family life, said Sandy Kalczynski, who operates Callisters with sisters Michele Zelenak and Melanie Jensen.
“It becomes a memory tree for them,” Kalczynski said. “They buy them every year, they personalize them with their kids’ name on them, and each year as they put them on the tree they can kind of go back and go through the life story of their kids. It’s a great tradition.”
Mall operators typically can count on Callisters to be back for a stint of almost three months starting in mid-October each year, looking to use 3,000 to 5,000 square feet of space. That approach makes Callisters Christmas an exception among seasonal retailers.
For many, a kiosk in the aisle of a mall is where they set up shop.
Jake Gruber, co-owner of Heartstrings, a jewelry business that sells customized lockets and bracelets with charms, is selling at Mayfair for the first time. Heartstrings operates from a kiosk on the second floor of the mall near Center Court.
“Mayfair does seem to be a pretty powerful mall for the region,” he said.
Based in East Dundee, Ill., Heartstrings sells at festivals, street markets and other locations in the Chicago metro area during warm weather. For the 2016 holiday season, it has kiosks at Gurnee Mills and Harlem Irving Plaza in suburban Norridge, in addition to Mayfair.
Gruber’s pitch for Heartstrings: “It makes a really nice personalized gift for somebody who’s hard to buy for. We’ve got them in all price ranges. Lockets start at $20 and they kind of go up from there. Charms are $2 or $3. It depends on the type of charm.”
The worst part of having a retail kiosk in a mall? The lull in shoppers between Black Friday and the last few days before Christmas, Gruber said.
“All of a sudden everybody’s got to have a last-minute gift, and we’ve got four people deep and we’re trying to process it as fast as we can,” he said.
Strolling through the area’s biggest enclosed malls — Southridge, Mayfair, Brookfield Square — you’ll find kiosks selling jewelry, winter hats and scarves, personalized signage, Christmas ornaments, sports gear and collectibles, calendars, games, tea, candy and gimmicky gear like LED lights for shoes.
Chris Jaeger, senior general manager at Mayfair mall, said that in most cases, seasonal retailers offer products that are unique or complementary to Mayfair’s merchandise mix.
“Seasonal leases vary and can range from two months up to a full calendar year,” Jaeger said.
Another company that puts up a kiosk in malls year after year is Bartolotta Restaurants. The Milwaukee company sets up kiosks at Brookfield Square and Mayfair to attract shoppers who are in the middle of hunting for presents and gift ideas. It’s been doing it for about 15 years.
“We really are committed to the hospitality business and we
know the face-to-face interaction with a person from our company is just a lot more meaningful than going online and buying one,” said Julie Raye, Bartolotta’s chief marketing officer. “Now, you certainly can go online. We make it easy for people who want to do that. But a kiosk gives us that chance to have face-to-face conversations and I think it’s kind of at the heart of who we are as a business.”
The people who staff the Bartolotta mall kiosks are regular employees, not seasonal hires.
“We find that being in the malls is really important for us because we like to just allow our guests an opportunity to complete their holiday shopping and be accessible for them,” said Curt Brester, Bartolotta customer loyalty marketing manager, adding that for every $100 in gift cards purchased by the end of the year, a consumer gets a $20 holiday bonus coupon that can be used in the first three months of 2017.
Although Callisters Christmas now rents storefront space in malls, it too started out with carts and kiosks that sold a variety of items, including Beanie Babies, before shifting to Christmas ornaments in the early 1990s.
While the three sisters run the business today, some of their children are becoming involved as well, Kalczynski said. Next year, she said, Callisters Christmas intends to sell online, too.
Interestingly, it turns out no one in the family is named Callister. So where did the name come from?
The sisters just thought it sounded good.
“It went well with Christmas,” Kalczynski said.