With consumer wallets empty and the closure of many once-successful businesses, entrepreneurial minds in Ireland have had to become somewhat more creative in their thinking to make money and create employment.
At the moment one innovative strategy is taking hold in the retail and food industries, particularly in Dublin. The “Pop-up Shop”, which involves entrepreneurs leasing premises to open a business, but with the sole intention of only trading for a very short period of time, usually somewhere between two days and three months, for example, this service offered by these https://www.phillipsedison.com/space-for-lease/pop-up-retail-space.
The concept of a pop-up shop is in no way a new one, in the past it has been a popular strategy in the US and UK retail markets. What is somewhat unusual is the plan by the owners of these businesses, to only remain open for a short period of time. The reason behind this sporadic opening and soon after closing, is seen as the key concept and the main reason for success of these businesses, their exclusivity and them being very current. They are exclusive and current in the fact that they are only going to be open and trading for a very, very short space of time, and if people want to try them out they realistically don’t have long to do so, these sporadic businesses are seen as trendsetters and build up hype within a community or certain genre of people like students or the middle aged. If customers want to try them out they don’t have long at all, so they must act quickly to try it, this of course also means instant cash for the business owner, who normally sets up these types of businesses on a shoe string budget.
Recently, the Dublin retail scene has been subject to the opening of a number of pop up shops, and no doubt in the future, with so much empty retail space within the city this is what Dublin consumers can expect to see more and more.
Surprisingly, even big names like Brown Thomas have joined the popular trend, and have taken it upon themselves to open pop up shops within their stores, an example of this is in their flagship Grafton Street store where there are pop up shops from designers Zoe Jordan and Stella Mc Cartney, they also opened up a new and innovative Christmas shop called The Marvel Room before Christmas, which created talk and hype amongst Christmas shoppers.
Without a doubt the biggest name to be associated with the new Dublin pop up phenomena is CrackBIRD, a pop up restaurant spear headed by foodie entrepreneur Joe Macken, who is also behind the ever-popular and “hip” restaurant, JOBurger in Rathmines. In his quest to be alternative, Macken decided to rent out a premises in Temple Bar’s once dingy Crane Lane and transform the dormant retail space into a chicken lovers’ heaven, with a bare menu, being so limited that if you don’t eat chicken there isn’t much of a choice for you. Macken joining this trend, decided to set up the restaurant for only a short twelve-week period, open until Mid May, and the restaurant uses a innovative way of advertising and creating a hype amongst the Dublin consumer, using Twitter, which has really got people talking a lot about the restaurant. CrackBIRD has achieved this by using an innovative idea which allows any table up to six people to eat free if they tweet at the restaurant using the “#tweetseats” hashtag. This is definitely something a lot of us hungry students will be trying out in the coming weeks before CrackBIRD packs up and moves off.
It’s not just hype, however, in a TimesOnline review, Luke O’Connell wrote that his buttermilk bird “made [his] mother’s roast chicken seem like a waste of time.”
Pop up shops are set to continue to flourish, so keep your eyes open for these alternative and unusual businesses in the future.
