The latest Portland Development Commission e-newsletter is touting pop-up shops (temporary retail spaces) in downtown Portland, Oregon as a “success story”:
“Ten days in, designers recoup their investments, exceed sales expectations and gain extra exposure…and Portland shoppers discover one-of-a-kind gifts for the holiday.”
How do pop-up retail stores stack up against the triple bottom line criteria of sustainable marketing?
Pop-ups and the dollar
For creators of pop-ups, the tactic can yield quick profit. Indeed, PDC reports as much. Because a pop-up will occupy its space temporarily, little investment will be made into a remodel. Because of uncertainty, sales expectations may be set low, particularly if the backer is small (for major retailers, pop-ups can deliver good brand buzz and lead to bigger success, because they communicate, Hey, our shit is selling like hotcakes, come check out the big box!). Pop-ups are a financial quickie that does nothing for relationship building.
For owners of empty retail spaces, pop-ups can help bridge the gap between longer-term tenants -Â a month’s rent is better than none. Pop-ups can deliver a short-term fix in a tough situation without having to make much of an investment. I’d imagine, however, that landlords prefer those long-term leases.
For consumers, pop-ups may offer a unique shopping opportunity at potentially good prices – after all, pop-ups want to move merchandise quickly and prices can serve that purpose well. The deals may come with a hidden cost, however: weak return policies. You can end up with defective or unwanted merchandise and without the money you paid for it.
Pop-ups and the community
Pop-ups help temporarily revitalize areas with empty storefronts, filling vacant retail spaces and attracting foot traffic that may spill over to other stores. The Portland pop-ups enliven the black holes on the map of downtown commercial retail space. Once again, though, pop-ups are temporary, and unless long-term tenants succeed them, you’re back to the empty storefronts.
According to PDC,
“this innovative effort is also about creating jobs, supporting nine sales positions through the holiday shopping season as well as the work of 40-plus artists and designers.”
The Portland pop-ups have engaged artists and designers whose work is, in part, time-based, and so these two groups greatly benefit from the temporary nature of pop-ups. However, because pop-ups are temporary, the other, sales jobs are also temporary and those sales people must look for work again. Pop-ups’ job creation effect is limited at best.
A side note: If PDC considers pop-ups as “consistent with the Portland Economic Development Strategy”, the strategy is deeply flawed, PDC as its author misunderstands long-term economic development, or they’re simply rationalizing pop-ups for the sake of publicity. None of these options bodes well for this fine city.
For consumers/holiday shoppers, pop-ups offer a unique way to satisfy their need, but other than that, they just aim to sell more stuff. On the other hand, and perhaps typically for Portland, the downtown pop-ups have a distinct local bent, selling arts/crafts and designer stuff you may not find elsewhere. Time-based art is a very Portland thing, and it helps cultivate our geographic community.
Finally, one of the pop-ups, By Oregon, donates 3% of sales to worthy causes, albeit only for a month.
Pop-ups and the environment
The utilization of vacant retails spaces compensates for some of the waste of space while consuming extra energy and materials required to create and maintain the pop-ups. The short-term use of materials used for these stores is a waste, although among Portland creatives all the stuff may be more likely to be reused than elsewhere. Pop-up shoppers in Portland may also be more likely to walk or use alternative transportation to get there than in other areas. On balance, however, pop-ups would be more environmentally sustainable if they didn’t exist.
The verdict on pop-ups
Simply counting the yays and nays, the Portland pop-ups fall just short of the triple bottom-line criteria of sustainable marketing. If you put more weight on long-term benefits to the community (or lack thereof), pop-ups would fail more resoundingly. While you can certainly argue pop-ups and their beneficial effects are better than nothing, at best pop-ups are a sugar rush-like economic stimulus. At worst, pop-ups just perpetuate the short-termist, interruption-based outlook that helped get us where we are in the first place.
They may be creative, they may be fun, and they may deliver just the right jolt to local economies. Overall, though, pop-ups are a band aid for a problem they not only fail to solve but help perpetuate.
What do you think? Is pop-up retail sustainable and here to stay? What do you appreciate or dislike about pop-ups? What do you think of the downtown Portland versions of pop-up?
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Image credits: dimitridf, kahala, stumptownpanda
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I’d like to put one theory forward of why pop-ups are actually part of the sustainability movement: Viability.
I work with a lot of small craftsman entrepreneurs who are involved in producing, direct selling, and distributing their goods. They often originate their businesses with trunk shows or markets or festivals or the like. After an initial modicum of success, they all want to get their own shop. Pop-up serves this bridge well. It prevents many entrepreneurs from taking too heavy a risk investment while giving them the opportunity to determine if their goods truly can capitalize on a retail shop of if another distribution strategy is more appropriate. The downside of pop-up, to me, is the projectibility to future spaces. Because so much of retail is location-location-location, success in a pop-up may be more due to exogenous variables than those the entrepreneur is truly responsible for.
@Matt: Pop-ups can certainly serve to test product feasibility and research markets. However, the move from street vendor to brick-and-mortar sounds like a giant leap, particularly for “small craftsman entrepreneurs”. The desire to have one’s own store is understandable. But once the novelty of the product in a market expires, the aspiring entrepreneur may be left with a lease and a staff and many other expenses running a retail operation requires. As with my other objections to pop-up retail, it’s a short-term tactic at best.
Safer and cheaper ways to increase sales exist that would allow easing into retail: online stores (the eBays and Etsys of the world); consignment stores; reselling through existing retail stores that source locally…
While there are aspects of the pop-up store concept that I like, I also believe they have considerable drawbacks. For one, the negotiation process for a temporary lease for a pop-up store can require as much work as for a more permanent operation – the result is that they take valuable time away from finding appropriate long-term prospects for a space. And pop-ups can create image problems – much of the public may be unaware that the stores are meant to be temporary, so when the spaces go dark after a few months people think the area doesn’t work for retail.
@Kelly: Good points and thanks for shedding some light into the hidden aspects of pop-up retail. The more pop-up stores there are, the more the list of disadvantages grows. Perhaps the novelty element will run its course sooner rather than later…