Stores popping up for holiday rush
Shops fulfill multiple purposes for retailers
Pop-ups are all the rage this holiday season.
From Facebook hosting its first popups in Macy’s to furniture website Wayfair carving out space in malls in New Jersey and Massachusetts, both budding and longtime brands are opening temporary shops to tap into the holiday shopping rush.
“There is more activity around popups than in previous years,” says Neil Saunders, managing director of retail consultancy GlobalData. “A lot of new companies seem to be getting into the space, especially over the lucrative holiday period.”
The short-term shops fill an array of purposes, from allowing brands to establish a physical retail presence for less money than it would cost to open a permanent location to enabling traditional retailers such as Macy’s to woo shoppers with novel products and concepts.
Facebook’s pop-up is debuting in nine Macy’s stores across the U.S., where a mix of roughly 100 small businesses will be featured from now through December. Wayfair, an online seller of furniture, opened a pop-up at the Natick Mall in Natick, Massachusetts, and another in Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey, on Nov. 1.
Even brands that have a permanent, physical home of their own are getting in on the pop-up trend. Party City, a supplier of party accessories and decor, has 55 temporary storefronts dubbed “Toy City” that will be open through the holidays.
And FAO Schwarz, the iconic toyseller whose new flagship store opens this month in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, will have pop-ups in stores such as Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus and Macy’s for the second holiday season in a row.
“Along with our new flagship at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, our shop-in-shops are an important way to reach customers,” says David Conn, CEO of ThreeSixty Brands, the company that owns FAO Schwarz.
With nearly 20 percent of retail sales occurring over the holidays according to the National Retail Federation, the final months of the year have long been prime time for pop-ups, says Brandon Famous, chairman of the global retail occupier executive committee for CBRE, a real estate services company.
“That’s when most of the shopping is done, so people are opening up pop-ups to take advantage of those consumer dollars,’’ Famous says.
However, he adds, “you’re seeing more pop-ups throughout the year” as landlords become more receptive to filling vacancies with online businesses that want to connect with customers at a physical store without spending a fortune, and older retailers who prefer a short-term lease to test whether a particular mall or market is the right fit.
Simon Property Group, the nation’s largest mall owner, opened a pop-up marketplace called The Edit at the Roosevelt Field mall in Garden City, New York, roughly a year ago. Since its debut, a rotating mix of brands, such as beauty line Winky Lux and denim brand Revtown, has been able to grab a perch in a center that features such retail giants as Bloomingdales, Nordstrom and J.C. Penney.
The Edit was created “to bring new brands, products and experiences to our customers,” says Zachary Beloff, Simon’s national director of business development. “At the same time, we have developed this unique product which enables new brands to meet new customers.” Pop-ups also give shoppers who increasingly do their buying with the click of a button an experience worth coming out for.
“Businesses can be much more creative and take more risks with pop-ups, so they tend to offer things or experiences that mainstream retailers don’t,” Saunders says, adding that their typically temporary nature also creates an urgency that can draw in shoppers who don’t want to miss out.