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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Whether you’re just starting out and want to test the viability of your business, or you’re an established business looking to expand your reach, pop-ups offer an exciting and flexible opportunity. They’re a great way to try new business ideas, experiment with a new product, location or market, gain exposure, and learn about your customers - all with limited risk and financial outlay.
Inside Pop-Up Business For Dummies, you’ll find:
- Planning your pop-up venture - whether it’s a shop, studio, gallery, or community hub.
- Finding the right space for you.
- Negotiating with the landlord and sorting out the legalities.
- Fixing up and fitting out your space on a budget.
- Pulling in the punters - advertising and marketing your pop-up.
- Managing a successful pop-up business day-to-day.
- Closing up shop efficiently.
- Lots of case studies, checklists, tips and hints from experienced pop-up people!
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 299
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Pop-Up Business For Dummies®
Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/popupuk to view this books’ cheat sheet.
Table of Contents
Pop-Up Business For Dummies®
by Dan Thompson
Pop Up Business For Dummies®
Published by:
John Wiley & Sons, Ltd The Atrium Southern Gate Chichester West Sussex PO19 8SQ England
www.wiley.com
© 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex.
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ISBN: 978-1-118-44349-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-118-44347-7 (ebk)
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Introduction
Right now, towns and cities are filling up with pop up shops, pop up cinemas, pop up restaurants, pop up parks and pop up allotments. It seems like everything’s a pop up now, and nothing’s permanent.
Of course, pop up has become a buzzword and is being applied to all sorts of things that aren’t really pop ups at all. So to be clear, a pop up is any project tailor-made to a specific space, which opens for a defined period of time, with a clear start and end date. More importantly, pop ups do something different, unusual and interesting; they’re not about the everyday way of doing things.
Pop ups have been around for a long time. We only have high streets because markets, the original pop ups, became permanent fixtures in town centres. And since the happenings and arts labs of the 1960s, seeing work by artists, actors and musicians in unlikely venues has become common practice.
So if it’s so old and so common, why is the term ‘pop up’ everywhere right now, and why are people so interested?
People have realised that pop ups are a great way to do business. They’re ideal if you want to test a new venture. They’re perfect if you run a home-based business or sell on the Internet and want some extra exposure. They deliver magnificent results as part of a marketing or promotional campaign. And they help brands build real, lasting relationships with customers.
They’re also far easier to do than ever before. People have moved to do their shopping online, at out-of-town centres where parking is easier and in supermarkets that stock everything. With more empty shops comes more opportunities to strike deals for short-term lets.
So pop ups meet the needs of a wide range of businesses, and the opportunities are there for people who want to take them. Pop ups are becoming normal, and part of the way businesses work.
But until now, nobody has provided a comprehensive guide to how to devise and deliver a pop up. It’s been assumed that the people organising a pop up will muddle along, with a mix of skills in marketing, design, project management, retail and customer service. But pop up people need more than that; they need a specific way of working that embraces the temporary nature of what they’re doing and is agile and adaptable. This book is for those pop up people.
About This Book
This book is about creating, planning and delivering a pop up. If you’ve never opened a pop up before, this book helps you focus, keep on track and avoid mistakes. I show you how to gather the right people to help you and how to make them into a team that works together. And I help you with the more complicated issues, such as the legal aspects of a pop up and how to find funding.
You can also use this book as a reference, for subsequent pop ups. You’ll find it useful if you’ve already opened some pop ups and want to make the process a little easier. And if you’re thinking of making a pop up into a permanent shop, you’ll also find this book helpful as it covers some skills you need to make that transformation a success.
Beyond the loose definition I use in the previous section, this book doesn’t define exactly what a pop up is, by the way. Think of ‘pop up’ as a set of skills that you can apply to lots of different types of activity that can take place in lots of different spaces. Be as creative with your project as you can.
Conventions Used in This Book
This book is a jargon-free zone, because nothing’s complicated about pop ups. I avoid the technical terms used in business books, the arts world and in planning and regeneration circles and instead opt for using plain English. When I do introduce a new term, I italicise and define it.
The only jargon I can’t avoid is the term pop up, of course! For this book, a pop up is any project in an empty shop or other empty space that is limited by time, with a clear start and end date. A pop up shop in a department store is not a pop up shop. A market is not a pop up market. Pop up shops are always temporary.
I use the word business throughout the book, to keep the writing concise; whenever I say business, I mean business, community group, social enterprise, arts organisation or even individual!
I also use the word shop, but I mean any space where you choose to pop up.
Foolish Assumptions
I assume that you want to start a pop up and have a good reason to do so. This book helps you by giving you lots of tips, tools and techniques to use.
I assume that a wide range of people will read this book, including:
Small business owners
Marketing staff in larger businesses
Specialists in marketing
Community organisations
Arts groups, organisations and individual artists
Self-employed people
Local government employees
That’s quite a diverse audience, with a range of different levels of experience, skill and understanding. So I’ve made the assumption that you’ll use the bits of the book that are most suited to your level of experience and won’t read it from start to finish.
I don’t assume that you have any pop up experience. I aim to give you enough working knowledge of each area to make a pop up happen successfully.
Most importantly, I’ve assumed that you’re the kind of person who wants to get stuck in, is willing to have a go and enjoys learning new skills. If that’s you, you’ll find this book is both a good starting point and a handy reference that you can keep coming back to as you pop up, again and again.
How This Book Is Organised
This book is divided into six parts, each covering a broad subject area.
Part I: Planning to Pop Up
You need to lay good foundations before you can build a pop up, so in the first part, I look at what pop ups are all about and at how to carry out research to help you understand your pop up and the wider market it will operate in. I look at how to define your aims and objectives as you write a pop up plan and at how to create simple risk assessments to make sure that your pop up is safe.
Part II: Building on Your Pop Up Foundations
The second part of the book is where popping up all starts to feel real, as I discuss building a team to make your plans come to life. I look at the practical help you can get alongside more strategic partners. I talk about local authorities and the role they have to play. I also offer networking tips and techniques to help you make friends and influence people.
In addition, I talk about how to develop budgets and where you can find funding. And I also walk you through finding and securing the types of spaces that may be suitable for your pop up.
Part III: Filling Your Pop Up with People
As your pop up is taking shape, you need to think about how to fill it with the right kind of people. Part III looks at creating a strong brand that people will recognise. I also discuss the range of marketing materials you can produce and how to make sure that they’re efficient and effective. Social media is the most efficient and effective tool available, so I talk about how to use it – and examine how to work with more traditional media, too.
Part IV: Running Your Pop Up
Part IV looks at the physical space, outside and inside. I offer you tips for fitting out your space and look at the techniques used to design and lay out shops. I then explore how you can staff that space, to make sure that it’s effective for your business and inspiring, interesting and entertaining for your customers.
Part V: Looking to the Future
Your pop up isn’t over as soon as the doors close. In Part V, I show you how to measure the impact of your pop up. I look at how success and failure can impact your wider business and the work of your partners. I also talk about how to make sure that your pop up comes to a good end and how to tidy up not only your shop but also your assets, without leaving any loose ends.
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Every For Dummies book has this bite-sized bit at the end, full of handy tips, tools and techniques. In this part, you find some inspirational things to do in your pop up and discover some very practical bits of equipment you’ll need.
Icons Used in This Book
The small icons in the left margins of the book alert you to special information and highlight some key things you need to know. In this book, you find these icons:
The target highlights something that you can use to improve the planning, delivery and experience of your pop up.
If I give a real or occasionally hypothetical example that illustrates a point in the main text, you’ll find this icon next to it.
This icon draws your attention to an important point to keep in mind as you apply the tips, tools and techniques you’re learning.
This icon highlights where things could easily go wrong and is a sign of pitfalls and dangers ahead.
Where to Go from Here
You can read this book in many different ways, based on your own knowledge and experience, but also on the finer details of the individual pop up you’re planning. However, it’s worth starting with the table of contents and the parts pages inside the book that feature a cartoon and a short introduction.
If you’re new to pop ups, start with Chapter 1, which explains what pop ups are and why they’re useful. If you’re more experienced and have a clear idea of what you want to do, open at Chapter 2 and start planning.
And if your pop up is already underway, use this book as a handy reference and check back with it at each stage of the process.
However you use this book, remember it’s a reference you can keep coming back to and plan on reading each chapter more than once. The more of the book you read, the more you’ll make sense of the approaches and techniques in other chapters.
While a successful pop up is about some very practical skills, tools and techniques, it’s also about a certain way of working, which is loose, light and flexible. And those skills will be useful to other projects you work on, so take this book with you.
Part I
Planning to Pop Up
In this part . . .
Whether you’re baking a cake or decorating the front room, it’s the end result you want and it’s tempting to rush right in to the fun bits. But if you don’t get the preparation right, the cake won’t rise and the wallpaper will fall. So planning is an essential part of any project, and that’s especially true for a pop up, which doesn’t behave like a normal business.
In this part, I help you lay solid foundations before you open your pop up. First, I look at what exactly a pop up is and why you want to open one. Then I unpick the process and help you create a plan that’s firm yet flexible, able to keep you going in the right direction yet still agile enough to cope with changing circumstances.
Chapter 1
Welcome to the World of Pop Ups
In This Chapter
Counting the reasons to pop up
Researching pop ups
Take a look around, and you see pop up cinemas and pop up cafes, pop up shops and pop up workspaces. And even those establishments that have been around a long time may suddenly have the word pop up in front of them. What’s going on with this pop up phenomenon?
In this chapter, you discover what pop ups are and why they’ve become so popular.
Just What Is a Pop Up?
So what separates a pop up from other projects? To truly qualify as a pop up, a project should:
Use an empty or under-used space.
Be time-limited, with clear start and end dates.
Not aim for permanence.
Be designed for demountability and ease of removal.
Have the potential to transfer to a different site.
Be in some way exclusive, distinct or special.
Pop up in action
Adidas opened a series of pop up shops across Europe. They used empty shops and were based around a simple set of steel-framed furniture and freestanding lights, which employees could put up and take down in one day. The locations weren’t announced to the public, but carefully chosen individuals were invited using social media sites. The secret stores only sold two styles of Adidas’s most desirable shoes.
Pop ups have been around a long time, in one form or another; they’re very much a movement that started with artists looking for temporary space to exhibit work, hold stage shows or create studio spaces. And good pop ups still need a bit of creativity.
Throughout the years, most major towns and cities have things happening that you could call a pop up. Take London. You could draw a line from Shakespeare’s reuse of the old gatehouse of Blackfriars Monastery straight to Camden’s Roundhouse, which was used in the 1960s for theatre and music happenings. In South London, Brixton Art Gallery ran from 1983 to 1988 in an old carpet showroom.
More recently, Space Makers worked in 20 empty shops in a market just around the corner. Many of these businesses started as pop ups, but have become more permanent over time.
Some very famous people started out this way. Tracey Emin ran a shop in Bethnal Green for six months, with fellow artist Sarah Lucas. Called ‘The Shop’, it sold a range of products they’d designed and manufactured, and the pop up led to Emin signing with a major art dealer.
While London has boasted high-profile pop ups, others have existed around the world and are part of the wider movement of reusing old buildings. Think of Andy Warhol’s Factory in New York, the Musée du Louvre in a former palace in Paris or the mass of buildings in Berlin used as cafes, art galleries and nightclubs.
More recently, pop up has gone from being something creative people do to being something mainstream. Re:START, a pop up shopping mall in Christchurch, New Zealand, came about after earthquakes destroyed existing shops, with the aim of starting the regeneration of the city.
Shopping centre owners Westfield now dedicate space to pop ups in all their centres worldwide, and they’re used by luxury travel brand Kuoni, designer Cath Kidston and even BMW (to promote its Mini brand), for example.
A range of businesses you’ll be familiar with already use pop up shops:
Halloween shops
Firework stores
Christmas markets
Making the Pop Up Decision
Pop ups offer many benefits to lots of types of business. Although artists were the first to recognise the benefits of pop ups, all business sectors, from small and home-based businesses to global brands like Reebok and Disney, widely use them.
You should pop up if you:
Don’t want a high street shop all year round.
Want to do something different.
Have enough people who’ll come to your shop.
Want to test out your ideas before committing big resources to a project.
Comparing pop up shops with traditional premises
Taking on any commercial premises comes with certain responsibilities, so why choose a pop up over more traditional locations?
In both situations:
You must sign an agreement for a set period and commit to paying rent, rates and utilities for that time. The agreement is between you and the landlord and gives you both rights and responsibilities in law.
You need to fit out the interior with equipment, furniture and fittings. Any equipment you use needs to be to a good standard, well-maintained and, most importantly, safe.
You must staff the premises and manage those employees. Your employees also have certain rights and responsibilities, so you need to be aware of the laws regarding the use of employees or volunteers.
Even if you expect to only employ part-timers they too have rights, perhaps more than you may expect. Ever since The Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000 was introduced in the UK, part-timers have progressively had their employment rights brought into line with those of full-time staff.
Check out Liz Barclay’s Small Business Employment Law For Dummies to help keep you on the straight and narrow.
Obviously, a pop up shop reduces some costs by being a short-term let and open only for a short time (see Table 1-1). Other costs, such as furniture and fittings or marketing, may actually be higher because the cost isn’t spread over a long period of time. Of course, this generalisation isn’t necessarily the case, and you can find lots of creative ways around that problem.
Don’t forget that any saving is offset by reduced sales income from a limited period of opening.
Table 1-1 Pop Ups Versus Traditional Shops
Pop Up Shop
Traditional Shop
Short-term tenancy, low or limited rent
Long-term lease; rent-free periods may be available but rent will rise
Business rates and utilities to pay
Business rates and utilities to pay
Temporary interior, furniture and fixtures
Full shop fit-out
Limited direct sales
Ongoing sales and regular customers
Fixed-term staff, high induction costs for short-time working
Permanent staff with regular responsibilities
Counting the advantages of pop ups
So why pop up at all? The answer is that pop ups aren’t usually a straight rival to traditional retail; their goal is to do something different. More often than not, sales are only part of the reason for opening a pop up.
Essentially, pop ups are useful for business because they can:
Provide a space for businesses that don’t need year-round premises, for example, seasonal shops or online retailers.
Offer a chance to test or prototype a new business model.
Allow market research of a new product, range or service.
Give a product, range or service an attention-grabbing launch or increase its profile.
Reinforce an existing brand and its customer loyalty.
Online meets the real world
One special thing about pop ups is that they give online brands a space to meet the real world.
Do you have a copy of . . . ?
Ministry of Found was a secondhand record shop, opened as part of a viral ad campaign for Yell. A much earlier campaign for Yell’s predecessor, Yellow Pages, saw an old man phoning secondhand bookshops, enquiring about a book called Fly Fishing by J. R. Hartley. The sign-off was him giving his name to the bookshop owner who had a copy – J. R. Hartley.
This 1983 campaign was updated to mark Yell’s move into digital, with a dance music DJ called Day V Lately trying to find a copy of his single, Pulse and Thunder. As part of the campaign, Yell opened a pop up shop in London, selling secondhand dance music. Day V Lately could be found in the store, as could his single. The pop up gave the TV campaign valuable media coverage and helped to spread the brand virally online.
Brands like eBay, Amazon, MySpace and Yell have used pop ups to market and promote their services so that they have a presence in the real world. These companies weren’t focused on sales figures; they were all more interested in reinforcing their online presence and increasing their web sales.
At the other end of the scale, many tiny online sellers are using pop ups to increase their sales. People who sell from home are increasingly coming together with other traders to sell from a shop for a short period of time.
Doing Your Research
However great your pop up idea is, it’s probably not innovative – it’s almost certain that somebody has done it before you. Previous examples include pop up gardens and parks, pop up shopping malls and independent shops, pop up cinemas and theatre shows, pop up cafes and restaurants and pop ups that pretend to be real shops when they’re actually just marketing stunts.
Reading up on past pop ups is an essential part of the process and can help you shape and refine your plans. Any plan is based on assumptions, and research helps you make good assumptions.
Research shows you some good ways to achieve your aims, helps you be realistic about what you can achieve and also stops you from repeating mistakes other people have made.
Time spent on research isn’t wasted; it means less time correcting mistakes in your plan further down the line. When a big company does something wrong, it has time, resources and finance to carry on. If your time, resources and finance are more limited, mistakes may mean the end of everything you’ve worked for.
Avoiding common mistakes
Here are five common mistakes (and how to fix them):
The wrong location: Being off the high street, even if only a few metres away, can mean low footfall. Visit the location, watch and count how many passing customers you might get. Think about how to increase footfall while you’re open.
The wrong look and feel: Making your shop look cool is important, and it must match your brand and customers. Find the balance between bohemian and high-end retail and play with the temporary nature of what you’re doing. Look at how successful retailers present their stores and take inspiration from their style.
The wrong opening hours: Staffing your shop is the biggest commitment you’ll make. Open at hours that match local traders and footfall patterns. Make it clear to visitors when you’re open and when you’re closed.
The wrong atmosphere: Your shop needs to be welcoming without being overpowering and pushy. The right layout of furniture, fixtures and fittings and a clear brief for staff will help find the right balance. Again, look at the welcome you get in successful stores.
The wrong marketing: You need to reach the right customers to match what you’re doing. Too glossy and corporate can be off-putting if you’re running a community project, and you can’t be too scrappy if you’re selling a high-end product like art.
Finding the information you need
Most people who’ve run pop ups are more than willing to talk and share their experiences. If you find a pop up shop that’s similar to your idea, get in touch and ask for advice.
A number of websites are dedicated to the pop up phenomenon and are a great short cut to find out about pop ups past and present:
www.emptyshopsnetwork.co.uk: Features regular write-ups of pop ups across the UK.
www.londonpopups.com: A listing site for pop ups in the UK’s capital, updated weekly.
www.popupspaceblog.com: A look at pop ups and the issues surrounding them.
http://popupcity.net: A blog about shops, mobile pop ups like food vans and other temporary projects.
The media have fallen in love with pop ups, and their articles often give valuable insights into what pop ups are really like and what they really achieve.
If you can’t find anything in print, don’t forget to do online research. Most projects pop up and then down again without any formal documentation or evidence they ever existed. However, in this social media age, everything leaves some legacy, often in the form of a blog, some short films or a page on a social networking site.
Of course, search engines are a good place to start finding those breadcrumbs. Commonly used phrases include: Pop up shop, Pop up store, Pop up restaurant, Pop up, Temporary shop, Meanwhile, Meanwhile space and Meantime.
You can also find up to the minute information using Twitter. Search for the hashtags #emptyshops, #popupshop and #popuppeople.
Try to use alternative search engines as well as Google – for example, type pop up shop report into Google and then into Bing, and you get very different results.
Asking for Help and Support
A number of organisations have been working with pop ups for a while, and they all try to provide help and support to people starting their own pop ups.
These organisations are all small with limited time and resources, so do make sure the answers aren’t available elsewhere and that you know exactly what you want when you approach them:
Check the organisation’s website first to see whether the answers are available.
Read any documents, such as reports or guides.
If you can’t find an answer, get in touch and be specific and clear about what you’re asking.
Empty Shops Network
www.emptyshopsnetwork.co.uk
Set up by Revolutionary Arts, this project aims to freely share resources, provide example projects and act as a focus for finding new uses for high streets. You’ll find good information here, as Revolutionary Arts has been running pop up projects in shops, churches and public spaces across the UK since 2000.
Renew Newcastle
http://renewnewcastle.org
This project aims to find artists, cultural projects and community groups to use and maintain empty buildings in the Australian city of Newcastle until they become commercially viable or are redeveloped. Renew Newcastle has inspired similar projects in other cities across the world, including Leefstand (see next section).
Leefstand
http://leefstand.wordpress.com
Renew Newcastle (see preceding section) is a direct inspiration for this project in the Netherlands, which has worked with a number of organisations in Rotterdam to create inspiring new uses for empty shops.
3Space
http://3space.org
With a portfolio across the UK, 3Space is effectively a letting agent for not-for-profit and charitable organisations. 3Space is developing resources to help people run pop ups.
The Meanwhile Project
www.meanwhile.org.uk
Led by the Locality (formerly the Development Trusts Association), The Meanwhile Project began as a UK government-funded response to the problem of empty shops. The Meanwhile Project works with landlords to save them money until more commercial tenants are found.
Chapter 2
Developing Your Pop Up Plan
In This Chapter
Coming up with a plan
Thinking about budgets
Dealing with risks
Planning a project is always a good way to spend your time. Planning makes the whole project less tricky, as you can see clearly who needs to do what, when. A plan breaks a big pop up into bite-size pieces.
The process of writing a plan also helps you understand why you’re doing the project and the benefits it can bring to other people.
