Pop-Ups With Purpose: How Temporary Stores Spark Lasting Success

Pop-ups can be a low-risk way for small businesses to test new ideas, build buzz and meet customers where they are. For some entrepreneurs, a pop-up becomes the first step toward a permanent storefront. For others, it’s a chance to experiment with products, pricing or community engagement. As these founders show, the right pop-up can spark invaluable lessons — and sometimes shape the entire future of a business.

Designing the Right Space for Your Customers

A pop-up can give you a sense of the right space layout you need for your small business. For Kathleen O’Brien Price, founder of KinHaven House, a social club and co-working space in development for New York City parents and their young children, pop-up events have been a learning opportunity. From layout tweaks to balancing the needs of kids and adults, these events have helped her refine what KinHaven House will become when O’Brien Price opens a brick-and-mortar space next year.

“The very first one I threw was in 2022, and it was Halloween themed. It was in a space I’d used for dinner [parties] before — a large room that worked well for those events but not so much for the pop-up. People left that event saying: ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ But the more constructive feedback was: ‘This kind of just felt like a kids party.’

“Since then, I’ve tried to find spaces that have dividers. Recently, I hosted another Little Boo Halloween Brunch at a brownstone in Harlem. The kids were mostly upstairs and the parents were downstairs. This separation was key because, today, we want to be around our families but still maintain some space and separation. I want to know my kid is here and enjoying themselves, but I also would like to finish this conversation. That was probably the biggest lesson I learned.

“It’s important for me to throw these pop-ups because it helps me collect information about what parents actually want and need. It also helps show me what price points people are comfortable paying. It’s going to be super important as I’m talking to more investors to show traction. For the person who doesn’t have a kid but has lots of money, it’s important to show the demand.”

MORE FROM O’BRIEN PRICE: See a Need, Start a Business

Testing the Market Before You Commit

Pop-ups can also be a smart, low-risk way to test a new market before committing to a permanent space. Stylist Erica Hanks, founder of Showroom — an omnichannel women’s designer retailer with brick-and-mortar locations in Kiawah Island, South Carolina, and Austin, Texas — used a major event as the perfect opportunity to take her online styling business into the physical world.

“I had always vacationed on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, … we found out that the PGA tour was coming to Kiawah, and I thought: ‘OK, this is a great opportunity for us to test the water and just maybe do a pop-up. Let’s just do like a three-month pop-up. Let’s see how it goes.’ We worked with Northwood Retail. They owned Freshfields Village, [a shopping center in Charleston County, South Carolina], at the time, and I was just like: ‘Hey, I’m from Charlotte. We don’t have a store, but we would like to just see if we could do a pop-up here for the PGA tour and offer this, and here are our brands.’ We were taking a risk on: Is this woman really going to gravitate to what we have? We opened the day of the PGA tour with a pop-up, and in three days, we made six figures. I knew that we had something there.”

How Open-Air Centers Help Small Brands Thrive

For Jackie Wachter, co-founder of Fount — a Cleveland-based leather goods brand known for its handcrafted bags — open-air centers have been key to reaching customers where they already shop. These destinations offer the ideal combination of visibility, convenience and complementary retailers, helping small businesses thrive alongside larger national brands.

“In 2022, we were asked to open in Pinecrest. It’s a really beautiful open-air shopping center [in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland] with lots of great national brands, but the rent was really high because it’s a highly trafficked area. During COVID, one blessing that happened was that there were a lot of openings. Pinecrest reached out to us and gave us an offer we couldn’t refuse. They said: ‘Hey, just come and try it for a pop-up. It’s just a one-year commitment.’ We did a pop-up and were just overwhelmed with how awesome it went. We were over the moon. We said: ‘That went so well on the East Side of Cleveland, let’s try it on the West Side, too, at Crocker Park.’

“Open-air shopping centers are often more convenient for our customers. They’ve got great parking options, and [potential customers are] already there for other errands. We do well in areas that [have] a lot of affiliate brands that our customer also likes to shop. They love Madewell, Free People, Anthropologie and Lululemon, for instance, and you tend to find those at higher-end, open-air shopping centers.”

MORE FROM WACHTER: How Leather Bag Maker Fount Reached Its Audience

Turning E-Commerce Success Into In-Person Connection

E-commerce success gave Steven Fisher, co-founder of State & Liberty — a menswear brand known for athletic-fit dress shirts and performance fabrics — the foundation to experiment with physical retail. Pop-ups became the perfect way to connect directly with customers, giving them the chance to see, feel and experience the product in person.

“We started out thinking we would be an e-commerce company only, but then somebody convinced us to do a pop-up in Boston. … It went extremely well, and after that, we sort of fell in love with brick-and-mortar. Especially for a product like ours, where the fit and the fabric are so important, to actually be in front of somebody and have them try it on and feel it makes a world of difference.

“We would do a couple months at a time, prove that [our concept] would work and then sign extensions. That’s how it was for really quite some time. I think the biggest investment we did was a two-month pop-up in September and October of 2018 in New York City. It went really well. We extended for two months and then another year, and now we’re still in the same spot in Nolita [six] years later.”

Letting Customers Guide the Menu

Before opening her storefront at Virginia’s Village at Leesburg, Dana Alfahham, owner of Dana’s Cake Shoppe, tested the waters with a kiosk. The short-term setup helped her transition from a home-based business to a full-scale bakery, letting her connect with customers, gather feedback and build confidence in her concept before committing to a permanent space.

“At first we offered more cookies and baked goods than cupcakes, but it turns out there aren’t many high-end cupcake places around here. That’s what we learned from our customers. Now cupcakes are our biggest seller, aside from cakes. We have a wide range of cupcakes available with very unique flavors that you cannot see anywhere else, like lemon-turmeric, mixed berries and snickerdoodle.

Turning Pop-Up Challenges Into Lessons To Take Forward

Not every pop-up leads directly to success, and that’s often part of the lesson. Sometimes, the value lies in understanding what it really takes to run a storefront. For Nakija Mills, founder of Lekker Choco Treats in Livonia, Michigan, a three-month pop-up before opening her store at Laurel Park Place mall taught her that patience, persistence and strong marketing are just as important as the products themselves.

“From December of 2021 to February of 2022, I had the opportunity to lease a pop-up space in downtown Farmington at Browndog, a former dessert store that closed during the pandemic. It was a good opportunity to see how it would feel to have a brick-and-mortar. It was definitely a learning experience. It taught me patience and consistency. In the beginning, things were really slow. I had only done vendor shows before and was used to large crowds, so when I got into Browndog, I realized that, unlike festivals, people don’t just walk in and they’re not just going to come to you. You need to let them know you’re here and market. I felt like I was building my business from the ground up again. About a week before I closed, I had an interview with [popular local TV show] Live in the D and I felt I sad because I was like: ‘Everybody’s gonna see me on TV and I’m literally closing in a week.’

“I wasn’t always sure I wanted to be in the mall. But when I briefly had that pop-up store, I learned: With me being a new business, I need to be in a location where there’s people constantly walking by. Even if they’re not purchasing an item, just the fact that they’re seeing you and they’re walking past you — it makes a big difference.”