Unlocking the Potential of Pop-up Stores: A Comprehensive Guide to Success

Pop-up stores are temporary retail spaces that are set up for a short period of time, often to showcase and sell a specific product or brand, test a new market, or take advantage of seasonal trends or events. They can be found in various locations, such as shopping malls, busy streets, or even within existing stores.

The growing trend of pop-up stores is due to the clear benefits such as generating buzz and increasing brand awareness, and brand engagement, particularly if they feature unique, engaging experiences or exclusive products.

Pop-up stores allow retailers to interact directly with customers, maximize sales during high-demand periods, effectively manage their inventory and reduce the need for markdowns or sales. All these benefits increase the ability to experiment and reduce risks compared to traditional stores.

But pop-up stores are not all risk-free and successful. Choosing to invest in pop-up stores is an allocation of resources. It takes your time, focus and capital, an investment tied to a specific location and a specific target group, and you need to understand the ROI.

Luckily, there are many things you can do to minimize the risk if you are unsure about the concept, the location, the potential target group at the destination, or the potential ROI.

1. Set clear demands on visitor insights to the property manager

   You should have equivalent demands on a property manager, in the same way, that you today have certain demands on a platform such as Amazon or Zalando. They should be able to give you historical data about their visitors.
   
   They should be able to explain how many visitors are usually at the destination or pop-up store, how active the visitors usually are (number of store visits per visitor), how many visits the previous pop-up store received, which target group they got, and what the previous ROI has been.
   
   

2. Measure your visitors with modern people counting

   If you want to be able to understand key figures such as brand awareness, conversion rates, marketing spend, target group analysis, your share of visitors in relation to all visitors at the destination or the difference between your investment against the average (previous pop-ups), then you need a people counter that can handle these insights.
   
   You need a people counter that can handle traditional people counting (entrances/exits) but also customer journeys, target group detections, historical benchmarks and much more.
   
   

3. Log your activities in your people counting system

   You need to log the activities you put in (which of course is classic project management) in order to understand the return of an investment pop-up store. But it's not just about the resources you put into setting up your pop-up, it's also about all activities in your marketing towards your pop-up, which products you present, staffing and much more. Because those activities will also affect your results!
   
   To be able to do this, you need a people counting system that can handle other types of data than only your visitors such as your marketing, project management, sales and all other types of activities you will carry out.
   
   

4. Analyze the result

   Once you have an understanding of historical data for the destination, your visitors, their customer journeys, and all activities, then you can easily analyze the outcome and understand whether it was successful or not. To be able to do this, you need a people counter that can, in a simple manner, analyze your data and present your results.

All of this may sound complicated, and it can be if you don't have a system for it. But at the same time, it is crucial to understand the relevance and results of such as large investment as a pop-up store.

That's why Indivd offers a people counting system that also helps you with historical analyses and all internal and external activities. A complete system to understand the relevance and results of your investments in your pop-up stores but also malls, city centres and stores. So you get good quality support for your decision-making.

Your results become continuous learning and enable you to use your new results in your new investments, compare differences and more easily understand what you should continue to do, what you should do more of and what you should stop doing.