hello DODO's Top 10 Tips for Running a Pop Up Shop!
Hello! I initially began writing this blogpost back in March 2020 thinking it would be a good thing to do in the run up to our Summer 2020 pop up shop. Well! That pop up didn't actually happen (no prizes for guessing why!) so I thought I'd wait until we had completed our 2021 pop up instead (juuuuuuust incase!)
We first popped up at Colonnade House - Worthing's Creative Hub - back in 2017 for one week. It was the first time we'd ever done a solo pop up shop and it was both a huge confidence boost and a steep learning curve! We loved it though and returned that same year for another week for 'hello DODO Winterland'. The following summer in 2018 we went full out and popped up for three whole weeks which was amazing but very tiring on top of keeping our online shops running! This time we went for what we think is the sweet spot of two weeks....still hard work but gives lots of people the chance to come and visit. Here's our Top Ten Tips for running a pop up shop for anyone who's thinking of going for it...some of these tips were pre-covid times (remember those?) so I'll add what adjustments we made this time around.
We definitely left it later than we usually would this time around as we weren't 100% sure it would go ahead. Usually if a pop up was in July/August though we'd start mentioning it in the early part of the year, not loads but every now and then bringing it up - sharing photos from our previous pop ups, just a gentle reminder to people who visited us before but also to introduce new people in our audience to this cool thing that we do! In the few months leading up to the pop up we begin to share more and more, giving sneak peeks of all the exciting new things we have planned for it and sharing the story of us making it happen.
If like us you're planning a pop up in someone else's space, be it council run or an empty shop - it's important that you spend the time to crunch the figures to work out roughly what you'd need/like to make money wise to make the project worthwhile. What's the fee for renting the space? Are there any unexpected costs such as needing to buy a licence to play music or do you need your own Public Liability Insurance? (We get ours annually through A-N membership) What budget do you need for kitting out the space? Rails? Props? Window decals? Flyers? Perhaps some things you might be able to borrow? Our main outlay for our initial pop up was colourful clothes rails, a million hangers (in our brand colours) and MOST importantly, a huge cardboard cut out of our DODO mascot! We knew that these would all be things we used again though so they weren't a one time investment. This time around we had all of those things already and our main outlay (other than stock) was having a bunch of our professional product photos blown up big. Again, these are something that we will use again in the future. If the costs all seems like a lot of money could you collaborate with one or maybe more artists/designers to make the project more affordable? (and possibly more fun!)