Check it Out: Reinventing the Pop-Up Shop

As we're in the throes of the holiday shopping season, chances are you've stumbled upon a pop-up shop while out and about looking for the perfect gift. From Toys"R"Us to PB Teen (an offshoot of Williams-Sonoma) to GameStop, merchants are increasingly turning to the temporary retail spaces as a means to extend their store footprint without the burden of long-term lease commitments. Not quite here today, gone tomorrow, but you get the idea.

Well, it seems the pop-up trend is crossing over to the digital space. Canvas Lands' End, a line of the cross-channel apparel retailer, launched Arrivals, a virtual pop-up shop series curated by eight fashion and lifestyle bloggers, in late October. Each shop functions as its own microsite and features fall and holiday looks styled by the blogger in his or her unique style that readers can purchase. The shops live on the individual bloggers’ sites for a week as well as on the Canvas Lands’ End website, where all the bloggers’ shops have been compiled. The first Arrivals shop debuted on Oct. 30, with the other shops being rolled out weekly through the end of the year.

"E-commerce retailers have been turning to pop-up shops as a way to bring their merchandise to life for consumers," noted Michelle Casper, senior director of public relations at Lands' End, in a company press release. "We wanted to take a page from this concept, but with a unique spin that we believe will really resonate with our online savvy consumers. We decided to take it online and ask bloggers who inspire us to create personalized content for the shops. This will allow us to provide a great brand interaction to a wide audience throughout the fall and holiday shopping season."

Each Arrival shop will feature three looks styled by the blogger that will be available for purchase. The bloggers will also provide content — e.g., their styling processes, their must-have pieces, tips on where to wear their outfits — to help shoppers make purchase decisions, much like associates do in brick-and-mortar stores. The content within each shop is shareable via links that enable consumers to post the looks on their social networking pages, including Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. Canvas Lands' End will be using the hashtag #CanvasArrivals to track the conversation.

To further integrate the digital pop-up campaign with its social presence, Canvas Lands' End is conducting a sweepstakes on Twitter around the event. For each of the eight weeks of the digital pop-up store campaign, eight consumers will win a $100 gift card to create their own Canvas Arrivals look by retweeting a message from the brand. There will be a new sweepstakes each week, with 64 winners total.

This idea of blurring the lines between editorial and commerce isn't a new one (take a look at Check it Out from our July/August issue for more on that). What's unique about what Canvas Lands' End is doing is that the Arrivals bloggers aren't affiliated with the retailer other than the weeklong pop-up shop they're hosting. They've forged a short-term relationship with the retailer that benefits both parties — Canvas Lands' End sells product and the bloggers/designers gain valuable exposure for their work. It's a win-win situation.

There are a couple of reasons why I believe digital pop-up shops could become a popular selling tool for retailers going forward. One, it appears they would be inexpensive to operate. Adding another digital channel isn't like investing the significant resources needed to build or lease new retail stores. Chances are your brand is already selling online, so the infrastructure to process online transactions (e.g., payment technologies, fulfillment, shipping) is in place. Two, as you've undoubtedly heard, consumers are increasingly buying goods online. The personalized, interactive shopping experiences consumers have grown accustomed to in-store are now available to them online. A pop-up blogger series is just another outlet for this type of selling environment.