The latest fad in retailing—doing anything but opening a new store—pop-ups are much more about headlines and hype than they are about the business of retailing
Share to twitterLord & Taylor is trading in 700,000 square feet on Fifth Ave. for a cozy little pop-up downtown.The news a few days ago that Le Tote, the new owner of what’s left of Lord & Taylor, was opening a pop-up store in Lower Manhattan for the holidays was greeted by some as the second coming of the retailing messiah.
The brand’s new owners say they will use this as a test to gather data and better understand what shoppers will want from the L&T stores the company operates. Be that as it may, one can argue that a 14-day run in one of the most atypical shopping neighborhoods in the country will produce information that is likely to be of little or no use to the remaining 38 L&T locations that operate primarily in regional shopping centers far from SoHo.
Yes, both headlines and hype have their place in retailing, and troubled brands need both to try to be reincarnated. But if the stated purpose of the venture is information gathering, why not put the store in a more representative location, like Roosevelt Fields on Long Island, Tyson’s Corners in DC or Lenox Square in Atlanta? Those pop-ups would be much more useful in trying to figure out what to do with this chain.
Gump’s is another retailer using a pop-up store with a purpose. Its new owners have set up shop a few blocks away from the fabled specialty store’s former flagship off Union Square in San Francisco basically to test whether it can do enough business in a downtown, tourist-driven neighborhood that has recently had problems with both the homeless and high vacancy rates.
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