Pop-up shops are a great way to get your products in front of new customers. They’re a low-investment business strategy to engage your customers, boost brand awareness, and get valuable feedback.
But coming up with pop-up shop ideas and launching it isn’t a straightforward task. There are hundreds of moving parts—including choosing a venue, promoting your shop, and evaluating its success.
Sure, there are best practices for running a pop-up shop, but learning from others who’ve hosted successful pop-ups can be helpful as you launch your own.
We’ve compiled a list of 15 brands that got it right, plus a few creative ideas for pop-up shop newbies.
Why launch a pop-up shop?
Connect with your customers in person
Today’s technology, such as chatbots, social media, and virtual appointments, enables retailers to connect with customers online. Yet nothing quite replaces the face-to-face customer relationship.
Pop-up shops let you meet and get to know your customers, and customers and fans can put a face with the name through a tangible brand experience.
Moreover, at pop-up shops, customers can test products and give real-time feedback on merchandising.
Test new avenues for your brand
Perhaps you’ve been considering launching a brick-and-mortar location for your business. A pop-up shop is a perfect way to experiment with a potential expansion.
Warby Parker is an ecommerce eyewear brand that initially tested physical retail through pop-up shops. Its experiment was so successful that the company opened several storefronts and now has nearly 90 retail locations.
Maybe you’ve been tinkering with a new product line or with the prospect of targeting a new audience. Launching a pop-up shop can help you validate demand before you permanently invest. Pop-up shops also let you test new pricing, product bundles, and merchandising ideas.
Build brand buzz
Pop-up shops employ two powerful levers for your business: scarcity and word-of-mouth marketing.
The temporary nature of a pop-up encourages customers to stop by and shop. Market both the start and end dates of your pop-up to enhance the feeling of scarcity.
Pop-up shops can also double as content creation studios, where customers take photos and share content about your products. This user-generated content and referral marketing can build valuable buzz for otherwise “intangible” retail brands.
Examples of pop-up shops
1. BarkShop Live
BarkShop is an online subscription box and pet gift store. It opened a pop-up shop called BarkShop Live in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood and invited pet owners to bring their four-legged friends to “shop.”
Once inside, the dogs were outfitted with tech-equipped vests that tracked their movements. An app provided insights on their dog’s toy preferences as well as a way to purchase items that would be shipped directly to their homes.
By treating the pop-up shop as a testing ground, BarkShop gathered valuable data about its products. The event also served as an experiment for future expansion into brick-and-mortar retail, tapping into the experiential marketing trend.
“To create really great experiences for dogs, we’ve realized that we need to create really good experiences for their humans, too,” Henrik Werdelin, co-founder of Bark & Co., told Digiday. “There aren’t too many cool things you can do with your dog right now, except maybe going for a walk or to the park.”
2. Penguin
Penguin Life, the lifestyle division of Penguin Random House, set up a pop-up bookshop in London on International Women’s Day—leveraging the idea of seasonal pop-up shops.
The shop offered titles by female writers, honoring “the way that women contribute, often under the radar, to every facet of society,” according to the company.
In addition to selling books, visitors attended workshops and author appearances. Proceeds from ticket sales were donated to Solace Women’s Aid, a charity that provides support to domestic violence survivors. Customers could also purchase books that were donated to nonprofits.
3. West Elm
Home décor retailer West Elm invited local business owners to set up pop-up shops in their stores on weekends. The opportunity, called West Elm Local, gave artisans a chance to expand their brand awareness and potentially their customer base.
Paper artist Megan Alchowiak participated in five West Elm pop-up opportunities to demonstrate her work and make sales.
“My work is dimensional and hard to photograph,” she told Craft Industry Alliance. “Many people don’t know what paper quilling is. Once they see it, they purchase it immediately.”
4. IKEA Play Café
Furniture retailer IKEA has a café in its locations that serves its famous meatballs. It held a pop-up café in Toronto to spotlight its food, giving diners a chance to enjoy its meatballs, chicken balls, and veggie balls without trekking through the giant store.
In addition to the dining experience, houseware products related to cooking, eating, and entertaining were also available to try out. “For us, it’s really about defying the conventions,” IKEA’s corporate press officer Stephanie Harnett told the Toronto Star. “For the past two years we’ve had a really big focus on food, so life in and around the kitchen—the growing, the cooking, the storing and the entertaining, from a food perspective.”
5. Blamé
The YWCA leveraged the popularity of pop-up shops to draw attention to the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. It set up a boutique called Blamé that displayed women’s clothing. When guests read the product signs and price tags, however, they realized that the pop-up wasn’t about sales.
One tag said: “She’s 16. Why was she that drunk where she doesn’t remember? It could have been much worse. She’s lucky.”
The pop-up was meant to draw attention to how victims of violence are treated. “Victim blaming is sometimes something that you stumble into. Normal, decent people could be in that role and just arrive there without thinking,” said Terry Drummond of Juniper ParkTBWA, the marketing firm that helped the YWCA create the event.
6. Kylie Cosmetics
Kylie Jenner teamed up with Shopify to take her cosmetics brand from ecommerce to IRL. The pop-up store in Los Angeles mall had a minimalistic design and included a replica of Kylie’s bedroom.
Customers could use the selfie station and shop the wall of her famous lip kits. About 25,000 people came out to experience Kylie Cosmetics in person, and several products sold out.
The successful two-week event prompted Kylie Cosmetics to open seven pop-up locations across the country during the 2017 holiday season, with locations in New York, Las Vegas, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, and Houston. This time, Jenner added two lip kits that were exclusive to the pop-up shop.
7. Leesa Dream Gallery
Online mattress-in-a-box retailer Leesa gave customers a chance to try its product in person. To make it memorable, the brand turned the experience into a statement by holding its pop-up shop in a SoHo gallery filled with pieces from ArtLifting, an online marketplace of works created by artists who were disabled or homeless.
The Leesa Dream Gallery exhibited artwork that centered on the theme “Everybody has a dream: What’s yours?” The artwork was for sale as originals or prints. Leesa also offered a limited edition mattress that featured a cover inspired by one of the artists.
The event was billed as being a “no-pressure environment,” without pushy salespeople. Customers could lie down on the mattress or simply enjoy a cup of coffee and discover up-and-coming artists.
8. Pantone Café
During Paris Fashion Week, global color expert Pantone set up a pop-up event called Pantone Café, selling food in the same vivid shades as its colors. Shoppers could enjoy beverages, such as Jolly Green juice and espresso, and food that included éclairs and croissants, each labeled with a corresponding Pantone color number.
The café was set up in a bright red shipping crate that was also reflective of a Pantone color (Monte Carlo red), and paper goods were printed in Pantone shades. By turning colors into food, Pantone Café let shoppers experience Pantone through a variety of senses.
9. Glossier
Glossier is a popular best-in-beauty brand that stemmed from Emily Weiss’s blog, Into the Gloss. The brand launched a pop-up shop in Boston’s Seaport neighborhood. (Seaport is well-known for The Current, a pop-up village that’s hosted the likes of Booty by Brabants, Studs, and Klaviyo.)
At its pop-up—the first for the brand in New England—Glossier dressed up nine shipping containers outfitted with its top-selling cosmetics and skin care products. Customers were able to sample new products and talk with Glossier consultants to learn more about how to choose and use the products.
10. Modify Watches
Modify Watches (now Custom Ink) launched its pop-up shop as a way to not only increase watch sales but also gather real-time customer feedback. The brand sold one product—watches—yet those watches came in more than 300 variations. The pop-up served as a way for the Modify Watches team to better understand how customer interests and tastes varied.
At the pop-up, Modify Watches also showcased how it made its watches, giving customers a unique brand experience alongside the retail event.
11. ThredUp + Madewell
Madewell is a well-known retail brand with nationwide locations—likely the reason why online consignment and thrift store ThredUp partnered with it for a pop-up shop.
The Brooklyn-based collab was a limited-time physical pop-up of the online Madewell Forever resale project that sources Madewell products from ThredUp’s second-hand stock.
This is a great example of a pop-up that benefits both brands: ThredUp saves on the cost of a physical store, and Madewell benefits from increased foot traffic from the pop-up. Moreover, the pop-up is a chance for both brands to promote their shared values: “To extend the life cycle of clothing and challenge the traditional structure of retail.”
12. Nike
Pop-up shops aren’t reserved for digital-only brands: companies like Nike, which has been a brick-and-mortar brand much longer than it’s served customers online, can also leverage the unique nature of pop-ups.
In 2017, Nike popped up across four cities—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Toronto—to celebrate Air Max Day. The pop-up showcased past and present Air Max models and gave attendees special access to new products, including customizable iD Air Maxes.
Although Nike stores are spread across the country, limited-time pop-ups like this leverage scarcity to help the brand drive more sales and build a loyal customer base.
13. The Street Store
The Street Store is a non-traditional pop-up shop: it’s a rent-free, premises-free pop-up where homeless people can shop for clothes donated by others. Moreover, anyone can host their own Street Store.
The Street Store concept is a great example of cause marketing. By leveraging the pop-up concept, the brand can leverage volunteers to host events that serve homeless communities nationwide.
14. Dolce & Gabbana
Pop-up shops go where the shoppers are, which is why luxury brand Dolce & Gabbana set up a traveling pop-up shop in the Hamptons in 2021. For the month of July, The Sicilian Cart was available to Hamptons locals and visitors alike as both a shopping and cultural experience. It was designed to completely immerse consumers in the history of the Italian island through the use of images and historical symbols.
The luxury pop-up offered summer clothes for men, women, and children, as well as cultural activities as a nod to the brand’s Italian roots.
15. Paka
Not all pop-ups need a physical space—or even inventory. Take Paka, for example. The brand’s clothing is made from one of the most functional and sustainable materials on earth: alpaca wool. Three months into the pandemic, Paka founder Kris Cody decided to go on tour with his two alpacas—Chaska and Luna—to meet customers in person.
“While everyone was going online, I really wanted to go offline and connect with people,” says Kris. “I saw how much fear technology and the media was causing. I wanted to give people a break from it. Alpacas are magnetic creatures, so I made them the focal point of my tour instead of pushing the products in an unnatural way.”
Knowing that the bulk of his customer base was on the US West Coast, he organized the Paka Tour along the region, with his alpacas and trailer in tow. All he had was his mobile point of sale and unique wood-carved $20 gift cards that could be used to purchase anything on Paka’s website. He brought his alpacas to farmers markets, parks, and surfing competitions, offering free alpaca hugs to whomever wanted them.
“Without any product we created this incredible funnel from offline to online just by collecting emails in exchange for gift cards,” says Kris. “We got thousands of customers into our system over the course of two months.”
The brand also benefited from leveraging influencer-generated content while on tour. TikTok creator Bella Poarch did a photoshoot with the alpacas and shared it with her 63.3 million fans.
Pop-up shop ideas
Specials guests
Special guests like designers, influencers, and experts can bring in customers who want a chance to meet them. If you have special brand ambassadors or a relationship with the designer of some of the products you sell, host a pop-up around their attendance and encourage them to share your shop with their audience, too. This can bring in customers outside your typical demographic.
Collaborate with other brands
When you collaborate with other brands for your pop-up shop, you expand your reach while saving on costs. Before collaborating, though, ensure your brand partners align with your goals and values and that your audiences are compatible.
Exclusive discounts
Perhaps your pop-up shop offers exclusive discounts and sales available only to physical attendees. This could increase the draw to bring in more customers and make those customers feel special.
Contests and events
Hold contests or raffles to encourage customers to visit, and have them enter via social media to spread the word about your pop-up shop. Reward winners with free products, limited-time merchandise, or a special shout-out on your social media channels.
Better yet, host a contest and announce the winner on the last day of your pop-up, as this could encourage customers to return to your pop-up multiple times.
Complementary services
Alongside your products, offer complementary services that make your pop-up shop customers feel special. For example, if you sell cosmetics, offer free application services by makeup artists.
Product demos
If your business sells products that require extra education, consider hosting a product demo at your pop-up shop. You can also ask existing customers to demo your products and explain their use cases, doubling as user-generated content.
Mobility
Like food trucks for restaurants, pop-up shops make retailers uniquely mobile in a way that neither a brick-and-mortar location nor online store can provide. Consider hosting your pop-up shop in a truck or trailer so you can visit different parts of your city.
Free samples
Free samples, whether food, cosmetics, or other consumables, can spur valuable impulse purchases. Attract customers to your pop-up shop with complementary products that build trust and encourage them to buy more.
Exclusive releases
Save new product releases or launches for your pop-up shop. Not only will this increase demand for your pop-up, but it will also make attendees feel special and appreciated.
Customization
Like the Nike Air Max Day pop-up, consider making your shop an opportunity for customers to customize your products to their liking. Not only will this differentiate your pop-up from your regular product offerings; it will also incentivize customers to share their custom products on social media, thus promoting your pop-up.
Interactive elements
When done right, pop-up shops can be playgrounds for consumers. Ecommerce stores don’t give customers the chance to touch, feel, and experience products. Leverage your pop-up shop as a way for customers to interact with your brand, learn more about your products, and have a little fun.
New product previews
Not ready to release new iterations of your product? Let your pop-up shop be a place to preview or explain upcoming releases to customers. They can still shop your current products and get a sneak peek of what’s to come.
Charitable tie-ins
Use the buzz generated by your pop-up to benefit charities that align with your brand values. Donate a portion of your proceeds to a nonprofit, co-brand your merch, or offer to collaborate with an organization so they can leverage your audience and foot traffic to raise awareness of their cause.
Get started with your own pop-up shop
Pop-up shops provide unique ways to connect with your customers, bring tangibility to your brand, and generate buzz around campaigns, new products, or other causes. The benefits of a pop-up shop far outweigh the low investment required to launch one.
Use the examples above to launch your first pop-up, expand your brand’s reach, and bring your small business idea to more customers.
Additional research and content from Alexis Damen.
