Today’s harsh retail climate rewards ingenuity — authentic, unconventional ideas. While the pop up shop isn’t exactly a new concept, it’s one that’s become increasingly appealing to labels seeking fresh, low-risk avenues to engage potential customers. Pop Up Mob, a three year-old agency run by Ana Pelucarte and Maria Pulido, are experts in helping brands stage temporary retail experiences, from idea to execution. We spoke with Pelucarte about connecting with millennials and the elements of a successful pop up. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Could you give me a run down of what Pop Up Mob is and does?

Pop Up Mob is a full service pop up agency. We help customers pop up, from A to Z, building tailor-made service packages based on their needs. We help with everything from location scouting, to the actual concept ideation, to the operations — that would be inventory management, staffing — and then the promotions aspect, PR and marketing. What differentiates us is the experience aspect of it. We try very hard to be unconventional. We believe that anything can be popped up — the less obvious the more interesting. Apps, for example, are great to pop up because it’s so challenging creating an interesting 3D experience from something digital.

How long have you been operating for?

Over three years.

What was the impetus for you guys to start operations? Was there one specific event that made you think, “Yeah, this is a business, this is a niche that needs to be filled”?

I think it was a mix of things. Me and my co-founder, we come from different worlds. She was more fashion. She worked publishing for awhile, with W, and Interview Magazine, and in a boutique branding firm. I come from engineering, product design and furniture.

It all started when I was living abroad. I saw this space, this old bar in Italy. One day I’d be coming home and it would be empty, the next day they were selling something out of it, and the day after it would be empty again. It stuck in my mind. When I moved to New York, my co-founder and I, we were bored with the retail scene. It was hard for us to understand how the most dynamic city in the world had such boring retail.

We started because we wanted to bring new brands from around the world and give them the opportunity to experience what having a retail presence in New York would be. The idea was for us to actually curate and bring brands from around the world and do our own pop ups, but we actually started getting inquiries from brands who wanted to do pop ups but didn’t have the expertise to execute them. So, we saw a gap in the market and a different opportunity, because there weren’t any agencies doing this. There were PR and marketing firms, but it’s not like they were experts at it. They were just fulfilling their client’s needs.

Why do you think the pop up retail concept resonates so powerfully with companies these days?

I think companies are realizing that traditional strategies are not working as well anymore, especially with millennials. Pop ups are one of the solutions they’re trying to gauge the reaction of this new generation, which is actually very hard to please.

Everyone is looking for the newest thing. The newest experience. The most unique thing out there. Pop ups allow you to introduce a new product. You can test the market without having too much risk. You can make people touch it and feel it and fall in love with it. The beauty of it is that you can really go where people are and follow them around rather than being stagnant in one place hoping people will come.

Would you say that this strategy actually does connect with millennials?

It definitely can. Strategy is a big word. Pop ups can be boring, as well, if you’re just putting a lot of stuff in a space and hoping people to come. There has to be the right strategy in place, and I think the marketing world is realizing this, so they’re executing pop ups that have more to do with the experience. These pop ups that are based around an experience are the ones that millennials feel drawn to participate in, even to wait in long lines for. When you see that someone is willing to stay in line for hours just to see something that’s ephemeral and that’s going to be gone the next day, that’s powerful.

Obviously, to be effective the pop up has to be executed well. What in your mind is the anatomy of a really successful pop up experience?

There are a few elements that add to this. I think duration is one of them. It can’t be too short, but it can’t be too long. There has to be the element of, “if you don’t stay in this line, you’re going to come back tomorrow and it’s not going to be here.”

I’m torn about location. I know the first rule of real estate is location, location, location, and location is definitely important for pop ups, but it’s not the most important aspect — PR is. If you don’t have a well-set PR strategy for a pop up, it doesn’t matter where you are. I can promise you, Justin Bieber could put his pop up in the outskirts of Toronto, and perhaps you’re not going to have millions of people, but you’re still going to have a lot of people and a well-executed pop up.

Adding to the experience as a whole, you can see that people want a piece of the pie, so, what can they get out of this pop up? I think that if you create items that are limited edition, that are unique, that you can only acquire there, that’s also very important.

It makes a ton of sense why musicians like Justin Bieber would create pop up experiences to sell their tour merch and connect with fans, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts on how more traditional fashion labels should use pop up experiences. For a fashion label operating in a higher tier of luxury, how can they make a pop up experience work?

I think a best analogy to explain this would be a runway show. You go to a fashion show and you see the pieces on the catwalk, and they aren’t necessarily the ones that you buy in stores, but they do this to show the world that they have the talent to be where they are. A pop up can be this sort of a thing. A well-known brand can have stores worldwide where they sell their merchandise, but when they do pop ups they do it more to create these one-of-a-kind pieces and one-of-a-kind experiences. It’s a different way to make people fall more in love with their brand. If they have a marketing budget that they usually spend on, for example, billboards, they can allocate some of that budget to a pop up. It’s a great way for them to be creative.

I think the best example I could give you would be with food. You have a renowned chef. Let’s say he has Michelin stars, and he works at a restaurant night and day that’s very well-known. Even though that’s his passion, he’s making the same menu every single day. It gets to a point where he sort of burns out. When you propose a pop up, it’s a way for them to have a blank canvas and do whatever they want in a city where no one knows them, and that if things don’t go right, they’re not going to have the repercussions that they would at the restaurant. They can really have that creative flexibility.

Can you tell me about some projects that either you’ve done in the past or that you’re working on now that you’re really excited about or really happy with how they were executed?

We have two very different types of clients. We have emerging talents who are looking for a shortcut to retail. I love this kind of client because they really need to be resourceful and creative. You’d be surprised at the amazing results that happen because of this. Then, we’ve got very well-established clients, who are exciting, as well, because their budgets allow us to have a lot of creative flexibility. More ideas come to fruition.

One of my favorites was for an Australian brand called Stylestalker during Art Basel. The challenge for us was that Art Basel is all over Miami. You’re not really at the same place at all during your stay there, so we didn’t want to be confined to a retail space. We felt that we should go where everyone else was going, rather so we suggested a pop up truck. We hired an ice cream truck and we revamped it. The designer actually made ice cream parlor uniforms for everyone in the ice cream truck — every single aspect of it was geared towards the brand. So, the menu, instead of having the different ice cream flavors, had the different outfits you could pick. We’d park outside of every fair, event, and party going on and hand out free gelato. People could come see the clothes and try them on. We had a fitting room inside but people were just trying stuff on right in front of the truck.

Where do you see the future of pop up retail going?

I think we’ll see brands in many different industries, not just fashion, using interesting pop ups as marketing tools, to introduce products and to test markets.

I think e-commerce labels are going to use it to gain followers. It’s a good conversion tool. You might see a brand you like online, but you’re scared of ordering it because you don’t want to have to deal with returns. So, e-commerce platforms are great recurring clients, because once a customer feels the product and knows their size, it’s very easy for them to convert that to a sale online.

Pop ups are also great for seasonal sales. Brands can optimize their budgets in terms of not having a permanent store. We have a client called OnePiece, a onesie brand from Norway. They’re well-established, and they could have retail stores, but their marketing strategy is all based around pop ups. They have pop ups in different parts of the world that open and close one after the other. They’re in New York towards the beginning of winter, then they go to Vancouver, then to Vale. Then they open in London. They’re just popping up all over the world where they think their sales could be the strongest.

You can acquire a lot of sales if it’s done correctly, but the best way to think of pop ups is still from a marketing stand point rather than sales. I think if you have the right expectations and you can really take the ROI in terms of impressions and followers and how your company grows after it, then that’s the best way to look at it.

Are there any kinds of new tech that you think will have a big impact on pop up retail?

There’s the tech for the retail world, for the people that pop up — tracking traffic, capturing what people like the most. That’s one part, and should be extremely helpful in terms of metrics, which is something that I feel the world is struggling with right now. 

For consumers, tech is going to be an added experience but it’s not going to be one of the key features the pop up. There are a lot of things that you can do, but it’s always going to be an added bonus to the pop up, different ways for a client to experience the brand. I think that it can add to the experience, but it’s not going to be the key element within it.

Q&A by Adam Wray, Curator of FashionREDEF. You can follow Adam on REDEF and Twitter (@FashionREDEF, @Terminal_avenue), or reach him at adam.wray@redefgroup.com