Five years ago, Toys ‘R’ Us opened 350 holiday express pop-up stores during the fourth quarter. The program was vastly scaled back the following year and has pretty much disappeared. And while TRU wasn’t the first to implement a pop-up concept, its efforts in 2009 gave rise to a wide array of much smaller—often single-unit pop-ups—that have been as much about promotion as sales. Among recent examples:
- Paul Frank has opened a pop-up shop in New York’s paramount hotel, showcasing apparel, sleepwear, accessories, and NYC-themed gifts. The location will be open through January 30, 2015. A charitable component benefits Covenant house.
- Dreamworks Animations’ AwesomenessTV YouTube network is opening Scene@AwesomenessTV in Los Angeles. The shop features curated merchandise and items that can be personalized, and will host live appearances and other events.
- Amazon is opening a pop-up test site on Fifth Avenue at 34th Street in Manhattan, across the street from the Empire State Building. This mini warehouse carries a limited inventory of top sellers for same-day deliveries and also showcases Amazon products such as Kindle e-readers, and Fire phones and TVs.
- Central Perk, a coffee shop in New York City based on the Friends TV series, has also been selling licensed merchandise.
New retail formats aren’t limited to pop-ups—or to the U.S. American Greetings Properties’ Care Bears and Sanrio’s Little Twin Stars (Kiki and Lala, the company’s second most popular characters in Japan, behind Hello Kitty) have a co-branded café in Hiroshima Parco, one of Japan’s largest shopping centers. The concept was developed by Care Bears’ Japanese licensing agent Mindworks Entertainment and Inoue Corporation.