Guidelines pop-up stores

The challenge in the creation of the pop-up store is to align all the planets to make it a success. We can give you some key tips to help you think through the process.

Step 1: define your pop-up store retail strategy

Defining the objective of your pop-up store

The cornerstone of a successful pop-up store is to clearly determine its objective before the operation . Thus, each decision-making in the creation of a pop-up store must be made in such a way as to go in the direction of this objective and the overall strategy of the company, without ever deviating from it, at the risk of losing performance.

What type of objectives? First, there are the commercial objectives. Thanks to the pop-up store as an additional acquisition channel, you can determine your retail strategy to boost your sales.

Then there are all the marketing objectives. The famous communication campaign to raise awareness and visibility, for a product launch for example. There are also objectives linked to customer relations: forging closer links with your customers in order to create a community and build loyalty. The Maison Dorée brand, launched by the famous influencer Chloé B, springs to mind. She broke the digital barrier by meeting her community, which was largely linked to Instagram. What's more, being close to the customer means you can get customer feedback and better determine your offer to meet their needs.

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These objectives will enable you to determine your retail strategy and allocate the necessary budget to each department: shop hire, layout and decoration, logistics, in-house training, digital marketing, partnerships, etc. Your objectives will also determine the duration of your pop-up store. An ephemeral shop may last 1 week for a communication campaign, or 3 to 6 months for a test & learn operation.

Base yourself on your positioning and yo

Once you've worked out the why, it's important not to lose sight of the who. Your brand's target audience and your positioning are important factors in determining the location of your pop-up store. A beautiful, atypical boutique in the heart of the Marais is not necessarily synonymous with performance. If your target audience is primarily a local family, the Batignolles would be a much better location for your brand. What's more, Paris isn't the only city where pop-up stores are popular. The opening of a new shop in a metropolis on a human scale doesn't go unnoticed.

Step 2: design your pop-up store to optimise the customer experience and make it memorable

For this part, we called on an expert in the creation of experiential places , Label Experience , in order to best summarize the steps for setting up your pop-up store .

Define the uses and needs of users within the pop-up store

This is the phase that builds on step 1: defining your objectives, positioning and target. This stage may seem theoretical, but it is crucial if you are to respect your brand's DNA and respond to users' uses and needs.

This is the method used by Label Experience, where a team of marketing experts carries out extensive research into the brand's identity, its community and its needs, prior to the architectural project.

At this stage, you can train your sales team in the challenges of the boutique and raise their awareness of customer relations. You can also limit the friction points associated with waiting in fitting rooms or at checkout. With these elements in place, it will be easier to determine a fluid customer journey that complements digital (click & collect, exchange, CRM, etc.).

This initial analysis of end-user expectations also enables us to identify and segment the uses that the pop-up should make possible. To make the exercise more concrete, it is useful to create personas that represent different typical customers in the community, with different expectations.

Each person must be able to pursue a fluid path and the space must provide answers to their expectations.

For the HoliMarket by Holidermie ephemeral corner at Le Bon Marché, Label Experience took the time to study the specifics of the beauty brand, its clientele and its desires for this rather unusual corner: the space had to mix uses by allowing Holidermie to be showcased, new brands to be discovered and treatments and workshops to be promoted. With these guidelines in mind, Label Experience's interior design, marketing and visual identity teams were able to begin work on the concept and its representation in the space.

Creating storytelling in line with the brand's DNA

Based on an analysis of the brand and a definition of its uses, the Label Experience marketing team devises a story that will be told in the space. This team works closely with the interior designers to ensure that the marketing concept, which conveys the brand's DNA, can be translated into the space through a project that is viable from both a technical and budgetary point of view.

In the HoliMarket corner, the idea of creating an urban market where customers could find nuggets was born out of Holidermie's desire to introduce its community to new brands that share its values. The storytelling was designed to meet the brand's objectives for this event, but it also fits in perfectly with the brand's holistic philosophy: Holidermie sees beauty as a whole, and the HoliMaket corner is a way of discovering some of its facets through the 61 brands represented.

For the storytelling to be reflected in the space, every detail counts: respecting the brand's graphic charter is just as important as transposing its values into the space. So, as well as promoting a holistic vision of beauty through the urban market, we're using Holidermie's colourimetry and codes: pink and grey guide the general atmosphere of the 120m2 ephemeral décor, while the agora cube is a reinterpretation of the brand's logo.

Creating a customer experience: personalisation, workshops, educational presentations

To make the pop-up attractive, you need to combine storytelling with an accomplished, innovative customer experience that is always in tune with the aspirations of your customers. This involves workshops, events, a personalisation service - in short, anything that takes us away from the traditional shopping experience. This is becoming more and more essential to convince the community to come to the shop:

In keeping with the Holidermie example, the brand wanted to introduce its customers to halotherapy, a relaxation technique. So we designed a dedicated area and created the Bloom halotherapy room, with walls covered in salt bricks: an original idea for an unusual Holidermie experience.

At the same time, to bring the marketing concept to life in the physical space and make it unique to each brand, interior designers regularly design certain bespoke pieces. This furniture must always be inspired by your brand's identity. If you don't have a large enough budget to create bespoke elements, you can, for example, take care of the signage, which, although less expensive, will also allow you to create an educational setting that tells the story of your brand and your products.

For example, the Holidaymie sales area features tables in the shape of the gua sha relaxation stones so dear to the holistic brand. These tables are dedicated to workshops that allow the brand to make itself known to curious visitors to Le Bon Marché, and also to build loyalty among its regular customers.

Choice of partners for the project

From marketing concept to implementation, there is sometimes a gap. To avoid unpleasant surprises on the day the pop-up store opens, it's important to surround yourself with the right partners!

Label Experience has developed a network of trusted partners with whom it works on a long-term basis. The interior designers particularly appreciate the fluidity of the relationships established with these professionals, who have become accustomed to the agency's specifications and operations over the years: a significant time-saver when designing a temporary space.

As well as building long-term relationships with its partners, it is important to call on specialist partners who have the know-how to guarantee optimum results in line with the concept: for example, for joinery and made-to-measure work, the agency regularly calls on Menuitbat, a joiner capable of adapting to the very specific demands of retail projects.

Finally, the choice of partners is of course decisive in controlling the budget. There is always a compromise to be found with the right partner who will be able to support you in accordance with the level of finish required: a simple approach that allows you to respect budgets and timing that are sometimes very tight.

Step 3: Make your pop-up store visible

Integrating the pop-up store into your communication and media plan

Let's start with the traditional media: the press. Create a buzz around your pop-up store by creating a press release with key information about your retail operation. Media outlets such as Sortir à Paris, Paris Secret and Fashion Network are quick to pick up on new ideas that are boosting city centres. On a different scale, the local press is just as beneficial, as are local shopkeepers such as cafés, tobacconists, florists and hairdressers. Introduce yourself and tell people about your brand - word of mouth is the key. Invite the press and shopkeepers to a launch event.

Then, of course, there are the social networks. Especially if you are a DNVB, share your pop-up store project with your community right through to completion. Show them the backstage area, ask their opinion on the decoration, give them some surprises... so that your customers feel involved and concerned by your operation. You can also create Facebook events around your workshops or the pop-up itself.

During the pop-up, encourage your community to create stories and posts linked to your ephemeral boutique, thanks to "Instagrammable" decor or competitions based on a viral hashtag. So that your pop-up store becomes the place to be.

And at the end, thank them with a souvenir video featuring customers.

Use micro-influence and collaborations

In the same vein, to create even more buzz around your ephemeral shop, calling on influencers, some bigger than others depending on your brand, can be a source of engagement for you. Informally, send them an invitation message, typically on Instagram, asking them to drop by your pop-up or come to your launch event and do a few stories. Which influencers? Those who follow you, those in the town where you're setting up and those who have a community that matches your target. There's nothing to lose by trying, and if it works, it's very beneficial.

On the other hand, you can collaborate with a brand that complements your own or is completely separate from it. Typically, for the Maison Dorée pop-up store, they called on Cookidiction to get their customers to buy delicacies, and created a Maison Dorée signature cookie.

You can even take the concept a step further by creating a pop-up store entirely in collaboration with another brand, as Louis Vuitton and Supreme have done. In this way, you can take advantage of the give-and-take of brand awareness.

Turning your shop window into media

Your shop window gives you more natural impressions. The ABC of retail is a letter and/or flag cut-out sign with your brand name and logo. The DNA of your brand will be imprinted in the minds of passers-by.

To go further and make passers-by want to come into your shop, your shop front needs to be attractive. The classics: the pavement stop and the open door. Relief, i.e. a storefront that's not flat, thanks to plants at the entrance like Mackeene did, chairs and a table... make your shop welcoming.

Then it's a question of arousing enough curiosity for potential customers to enter your shop. This can be a window sticker with a powerful quote, or a display of your products with plants or around a theme. The idea is to make an impact and succeed in conveying the world of your brand.

Step 4: Learning from your pop-up store

Your pop-up store allows your brand to obtain live customer feedback, and to analyse and understand your customers' behaviour and needs. Romain Jourdan, the co-founder of Les Raffineurs, is a fan of pop-up stores, and even though his sales team is trained, he told us that he automatically takes the time to go and talk to his customers and that he uses their feedback to develop the platform.

As you can see, your approach to your point of sale must be customer-centric. In addition to customer feedback, other indicators need to be monitored to measure the real impact of a shop on your brand as a whole.

Measuring pop-up store performance

It should be noted that your pop-up store is not just an acquisition channel; it allows you to test and learn about your concept. That's why simply tracking turnover and ROI is no way of measuring the performance of your outlet.

When you create an Ads or Facebook Business campaign, you don't just stop at the conversion rate? Well, at the point of sale, it's more or less the same idea. That's why at Nestore, we help brands to determine their indicators for monitoring the performance of their retail strategy (their NPS, the impact on their social networks, on site visits, their ROX, etc.). This enables brands to better understand their strengths and areas for improvement for their next pop-up store and, why not, for large-scale deployment.