Other businesses are experimenting with different ways to provide the pop-up experience.
The platform Appear Here has created an Airbnb-like model, allowing landlords and commercial property owners to rent out spaces. These can include anything from traditional shop units in arcades, to outdoor market stalls, to small spaces within bigger shops – or even warehouses.
The company Sook, founded in 2019, took a very different approach by building an empire of 13 dedicated pop-up spaces, with sites in major UK cities including London, Liverpool, Leeds and Edinburgh.
It owned the long-term lease on each shop, but deliberately fitted each one out as a blank canvas, with digital screens on the walls and adaptable front signage. This meant that when a business “popped in”, it could upload its own digital branding to customise it. These businesses would have sole use of the store, rather than jostling for space with other sellers.
Sook attracted clients like fashion influencer and entrepreneur Danielle Mass, one of the top sellers on online marketplace DePop.
But despite its early successful expansion, Sook ceased trading at the end of 2023. “We still believe that our model is the future of the High Street,” founder John Hoyle said at the time, but admitted he couldn’t secure enough investment to continue the venture.
It’s not easy to quantify the impact of pop-up shops, partly because they are not easy to define. A report in March last year, external indicated that their number grew in the UK by around 18% over the previous 12 months.
However, pop-ups should not be seen as a simple solution to the problem of vacant shops, cautions Natalie Berg.
“Pop-up shops are a fantastic way to inject character into our increasingly homogenous High Streets, but they are not a panacea,” she says.
“Pop-ups are something of a piecemeal movement and their success can be hit and miss. They are also by definition just temporary, so even the best ones may struggle to build momentum.”
For many “pop-up entrepreneurs”, time in a shop is their first taste of retail “in real life”. These online businesses sample the age-old benefits of High Street retail, like footfall and face-to-face feedback, without any long-term financial commitments such as leases or business rates.
Some may even want to find a permanent home for their businesses on our High Streets as a result.
As Nephthys Foster confesses, after she chats to a customer who recognises her from Instagram, “I definitely think I’ll have my own shop in the future – I’m manifesting it!”
Dougal Shaw, external is on X, formerly Twitter
