Pop-up, or temporary retail locations have historically tended to conform to few core tenets.
The main guiding principle is almost always to primarily focus on the retailer's own products as a way to stimulate sales.
Most pop-up stores, in fact, resemble miniaturized versions of what that brand’s permanent stores would look like.
That’s not the case for East Vancouver-based Herschel Supply Co., which is standing the traditional concept of a pop-up store on its head.
Herschel makes backpacks and accessories and sells them via e-commerce or through a network of wholesalers and third-party distributors. Its latest pop-up store primarily sells a product that is about as far removed from backpacks as possible – lemonade.
“We wanted to be able to open up and put a Herschel brand filter on a category that is so far not associated with our brand whatsoever,” Herschel co-founder Lyndon Cormack told Business in Vancouver July 4.
“Lemonade is potentially the farthest we could go to the opposite side.”
Herschel has backpacks and tote bags displayed on one of the Deep Cove store’s colourful walls. The rest of the store is designed to promote lemonade – complete with a lemon-themed chandelier and a giant lemon motif on a far wall.
One retail analyst applauds the move.
“Harmony can be created when two unrelated things are paired together, provided one of them isn’t negative,” said Retail Insider Media owner Craig Patterson.
“Lemonade generally has a positive image – sweet and refreshing, so pairing it with backpacks might be a smart move, especially with the messaging that there's a hiking trail near the pop-up.”
The pop-up shop’s lemonade comes in different flavours, with each being colour coded. The backpacks reflect that same colour pattern.
Herschel partnered with Vancouver’s The Juice Truck to provide the lemonade and with the charity ArtStarts to be the beneficiary of all the profit. ArtStarts works to expand the role of arts education in B.C. elementary and secondary schools.
The pop-up opened July 1 although it will have an official launch on July 7. Cormack said that it would operate until mid-September, when Herschel will close the store and revamp the space with a different, yet-to-be-disclosed pop-up theme intended to run until the end of the year.
(Image: Lemonade made by The Juice Truck also carries Herschel branding and is in a fridge at Herschel's pop-up lemonade stand | submitted)
When not dreaming up innovative ideas for pop-up stores, Cormack is overseeing his 170-employee company that designs products in Vancouver, manufactures them off-shore and wholesales them to be sold in thousands of locations worldwide.
The company is also fine-tuning its first corporately owned retail store, which it intends to open at 347 and 349 Water Street on March 1, assuming that the permitting process with the city goes as planned.
That permanent, 5,000-square-foot location will be the largest Herschel-branded location in the world.
The company currently has about 45 stores that are branded Herschel but all are run by third-parties and are not corporately owned.
The pop-up store is at 4377 Gallant Avenue in the eastern North Vancouver neighbourhood.
