For most of the recent history of retailing the pop-up store has been used to fill vacant space for short periods of time, a bargain-basement place-holder that served a purpose for renter and landlord alike.
But more recently -- and particularly during the 2020 holiday shopping season -- we saw a new kind of pop-up, an online version that often featured amazing virtual experiences thanks to the latest artificial intelligence-driven technology. By definition, these were limited in time and scope but it’s very likely we’ll be seeing more and more of these pop-ups as the retailing world continues to look for new ways to connect with shoppers; especially as the pandemic remains a factor inhibiting in-person purchases.
In fact, some of these pop-ups are becoming permanent selling environments, particularly the ones involving virtual tours of physical stores. Retailers like Ralph Lauren, Goop, Dior, Tommy Hilfiger and Vera Bradley have all introduced virtual stores, shopped without clumsy virtual reality headsets or any other techy paraphernalia. All a viewer needed to do was access the store through the retailer’s e-commerce site and start their virtual tour of an actual physical store, stopping along the way to pick up a few items for their shopping carts.
“With the virtual store program our goal was to reimagine the experience of walking into and shopping a Ralph Lauren retail store,” David Lauren, chief innovation officer and chief branding officer for the iconic company explained. And indeed the experience is pretty compelling, right down to the holiday music that played in December.
At the other end of the retail spectrum, Sam’s Club, the warehouse club division of Walmart, had a limited-run pop-up based on the classic National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation movie, taking viewers into the Griswold household where they could buy selected items from holiday décor to smoked turkeys.
Other virtual stores, pop-up or permanent, offered different experiences. The Goop site takes you into Gwyneth Paltrow’s bathroom, apparel retailer American Eagle set up its holiday shop on Snapchat and high-end fashion site Farfetch teamed up with Harper’s Bazaar to offer shopping via a video game called Drest.
Some of these virtual shopping sites were developed by a software company called Obsess that has obtained serious investor financing because, as one firm put it, “AR e-commerce experiences can unlock more profit.”
And who in the retail world doesn’t want more profit, virtual or otherwise?