Pop-up shopping
Apop-up garden market is coming to Boulder, joining other businesses offering seasonal and outdoor shopping and dining to draw postpandemic customers. Your take?
My most recent shopping experience in Boulder was grim.
My kids and I went to several stores in search of a birthday present, a bathing suit and a few summer clothes. The shelves in every store we went to were partially empty. Salesclerks were nowhere to be seen. The lighting was painfully bright, and the entire experience felt hollow and unsatisfying.
Despite my desire to spend our money locally, this shopping trip was a bust. We returned home and ordered the things we wanted online.
This recent shopping experience makes me a huge fan of the concept of more pop-up shops. In theory, pop-up markets seem to offer a unique and diverse selection of goods in a small, contained space, which makes staffing easier and eliminates the need for massive restocking.
Of course, the devil is in the details. If these pop-up markets simply hawk the same stuff that one can easily get online or on a quick trip to a retail store, they likely won’t succeed.
Likewise, the pricing needs to be competitive with other shopping options. All too often, pop-up or farmers market stand prices seem to be at a premium — call it the bougie boutique tax. I would expect a pop-up market pricing to be more competitive than a retail store, given that they don’t have the overhead of a traditional brick-and-mortar operation.
Finally, for pop-ups to work, they need an effective communication strategy and a visible location. From social media to traditional advertising, pop-up entrepreneurs need to spread the word of their existence (where they’ll be and when) to attract customers.
I’m not a shopper by nature, but like everyone I buy things. Buying things in-person from people with whom I can interact in a temporary pop-up sounds like a wonderful alternative to the impersonal online experience or the empty-store reality that I’ve found lately in Boulder. Rachel Walker, rodellwalker@gmail.com
Despite the danger from COVID-19 now dropping below the common flu, it seems, at least for some of us, the fear of being in enclosed spaces with lots of people isn’t going away.
And the appeal of outdoor dining, and now outdoor shopping, will likely stick around as well. In our generally friendly climate, what’s not to love?
The crux of the matter with pop-up stores is the land they use. Is it public or private? Was the pop-up store invited to the location by the landowner? Is the store squatting in public parking? As with most things, the devil is in the details.
Food trucks, sort of a pop-up shop for food, have been around for decades. Some of them, like the Salsa Verde stand near Rock & Resole, are semipermanent. I wonder if they pay rent for that location … What’s to stop another food truck parking right next to them?
Avoiding high rent is a strong inducement, but it probably wouldn’t be fair to park a mobile store, for free, on the street next to Montbell or Stio or Patagonia, shops that are all paying substantial rent. If the parking is public, is the pop-up shop just paying the hourly rate? Is there a limit of how long they can park there? Wouldn’t there be a queue of pop-up shops all waiting for their chance at the prime parking areas? I desire a free and open market, but changing the rules mid-lease isn’t right.
If the pop-up store is invited by the land owner, all is great and more power to these outdoor establishments. If they inhabit the commons, then regulation may be required, but perhaps we should wait until there is a problem before solving it. Bill Wright, bill@wwwright.com
One of my favorite memories of living in New York City is annual filling of the halls of Grand Central Station each holiday season with an enormous variety of “pop-up” stores. The wares for sale cover the gamut, from holiday-specific items like ornaments and wrapping paper, new gadgets and other potentially giftable products, and even fine art (old and new).
The surge of shoppers added to the already-uncomfortably dense trainbound crowds trying to get between home and work gives the whole scene a festive and weirdly dizzying feeling. But these booths must be economically beneficial for both the pop-ups and the established stores, as they seemed to get more packed in every year (at least, PRE-COVID-19).
And as fast as they appear they disappear, evanescing back into the daily routine of N.Y. life.
The ephemeral nature of these booths, their owners and their wares, makes me wonder where all these people and their goods go between gigs. New York, like any large metropolitan area, is a massive warren of places and things, where people of all types mingle and adapt, buy and sell and trade, and generally make their life where and when they find themselves.
Despite the insane costs of real estate, there is still affordable housing to be had close enough to the action to make it worth the extra effort required to make a living and even raise a family. It is not easy for many, but doable within the much larger environment.
Pop-up stores in Boulder, like other cities, still require dedicated owners and sufficiently interesting goods to succeed. Such stores can, at least temporarily, attract traffic and spending.
But they are not an economic panacea, especially in the context of an increasingly affluent and homogenous city structure in which the vendors cannot actually live.
So, sure, let’s experiment a bit, but let’s not pretend there aren’t much bigger issues we have to address. Fintan Steele, fsteele1@icloud.com