By Dan Schubert, AMTdirect
Pop-ups have been used to move massive volumes of merchandise, Halloween costumes, Christmas trees, Valentine’s Day gifts, Independence Day fireworks and tons of other goods that have nothing to do with holidays.
Heck, even Caterpillar Construction has plans to open a pop-up footwear store at a Manhattan hotel this month (who knew they made neon pink boots?). Look around at busy malls, parks, concerts and street fairs, and you’ll realize that popups are surprisingly common.
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But where do they get the best results and how do you go about picking the best location?
I’d put two criteria above all others: High foot traffic and high visibility from roads. Pop-ups don’t last long enough to make a heavy marketing or an advertising drive worthwhile. If you’re not easy to find, shoppers won’t find you.
Finding vacant spaces with high foot traffic and visibility is a challenge, every retailer wants that. The best spots — typically found in strip malls — might not be available, they might not rent short term or the cost for a two to three month lease could be astronomical.
Consider being creative with your location in ways that permanent retailers can’t. For instance, you could setup a pop-up tent store in the parking lot of a popular strip mall. In fact, the leasing representatives might offer exceptional rates since they cannot normally monetize their parking lot.
You’d need to investigate ordinance and permitting issues. For example, a leasing company is required to maintain 200 parking spaces at all times, your pop-up would be out of compliance if it covered too many spots. Building permits, restrictions on commercial use and waste disposal regulations could also derail your plan.
The leasing company will also have exclusive use clauses with tenants. You may want to open a Halloween pop-up at mall where Party City is a tenant, but they probably inserted a clause in their lease that would contractually prevent the mall from leasing to you too.
While strip malls and their parking lots are ideal in terms of foot traffic and visibility, they do present these issues. Finding high traffic and high visibility areas is not rocket science, but once you narrow down to a shortlist of locations, it pays to look at more detailed data.
Demographics is the key, on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, how many cars actually pass through the intersection where your pop-up could be located? Which possible locations are near the densest population clusters? Are you closer to family neighborhoods with lots of kids, or is the strip mall surrounded by retirees? Considerations like these could play a major role in your decision because obviously you want families around if you were establishing a Halloween pop-up.
Mapping software that uses data feeds for demographics, drive times, traffic and income can help you decide the best locations. Until you use software to look at traffic, population distribution and demographics, you won’t know if a location is as good as it looks, especially if you’re not local to the area. If you are building a regional or national pop-up concept, you need feet on the ground. Local brokers know their area, they can help with negotiations and they might point out considerations you don’t find in the data (e.g. they might steer you away from a high crime area).
Ultimately, what you sell has to complement how and where you sell it. I raise this point because short-term pop-up real estate will be relatively expensive. Strip malls certainly prefer permanent tenants, so you need to sell an exceptional volume of goods to make a prime location worth its cost.
To make a high traffic, high visibility pop-up store worthwhile, you need a high volume business strategy. You can follow my advice to find an enviable location, but make sure you’re in the right business first.
Daniel Schubert is Co-Founder, President and Head of Sales and Marketing at AMTdirect. As a Co-Founder of AMTdirect, Schubert helped build the company into a market leader for enterprise real estate information software. Schubert is responsible for all sales and marketing activities and has more than 15 years of experience managing and creating technology solutions for the retail and corporate real estate industry.
