The rising of pop-up stores showed future trend of retail, Elizabeth Layne, the chief marketing officer (CMO) of Appear Here, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"We think of pop-up stores as just part of the retail equation," Layne said. Retail business has been changing and brands look at retail in a different way.

Pop-up stores have been attractive because of low cost of renting real estate, lack of demand for other types of stores, and entrepreneurs who want to try out their concept and get a chance to see how the public reacts to it in different ways.

"We think of this really is the future of retail," said Layne.

Appear Here is a leading online marketplace for short-term retail space, like an Airbnb for retail. The company allows brands to book space online for short term easily and simply and in just a couple of short steps, which just fits the pop-up stores perfectly.

"They're able to discover the space online, pay online, sign legal agreements online, and then book their space," said Layne.

The brands using Appear Here platform to open pop-up stores showed variety.

"We see everyone from independent brands all the way up to big e-commerce players to multinational brands and they do it for different reasons whether it's for testing a market, for a marketing campaign, for experiential marketing or for even an event," she said.

The idea that a store could be open for a limited period of time and then closes and something else comes in, makes the pop-up store likely to attract more attention than just a regular store opening that that's intended to be permanent in that way.

Meanwhile, many brands view pop-up stores as a marketing tool as much as a retail opportunity.

"Many brands will use pop-up stores or short term retail to test the market, to reach out to new customers and acquire customers, to build brand awareness gate, or they'll do it as an in-between other marketing endeavors as opposed to more traditional media outlets," Layne added.

She also mentioned that pop-up stores showed a future trend of online-offline synergies.

An e-commerce brand could book retail space and open pop-up store for a few reasons. One is to connect to their consumers offline; two is for brand awareness, so a way for example, a brand booked space in London because they wanted to test a new market and really build their brand presence in London; and then lastly its customer acquisition, so people will see the brand as they're walking down the street and they'll be able to try it out in person before then ultimately buying online," she said.

"I think pop-ups allow these sorts of brands of flexibility to test retail and try out new markets while building their customer base that ultimately transact online," Layne said.

"I think you're seeing online brands looking to branch into offline, and then offline brands looking to branch into online, and seeing the synergies between the two. The future of retail isn't online, or isn't an offline, it's a bit of matches," she added.

Layne said the mission of Appear Here is to make it available to any brand to set up a shop, build a network of the best retail cities in the world, starting with London, Paris and New York, and gave access to brands both big and small.

"We work with independent brands, startups e-commerce brands, all the way to big blue chip brands like Nike, Google and Apple," she added.


Email: lansuying@nbd.com.cn

Editor: Lan Suying