Ralph Lauren’s Club Monaco takes pop-up strategy beyond its flagship
Photo: Club Monaco/diptyque Paris
Rotating pop-up shops in-store seems to be working for Club Monaco. So, the Ralph Lauren-owned apparel brand is expanding its pop-up strategy from its New York City flagship into more of its stores.
Since December, Club Monaco has rotated three pop-ups in its flagship location, with each store-within-a-store lasting three-to-four months, according to Digiday. The program provides retail space for small brands that offer products not usually found in Club Monaco, such as perfume and home goods. The pop-up vendors offer their own in-store experiences such as one-on-one perfume consultations. The chain has also been organizing thematically-linked book readings and panels to promote the shops. Plans are in place to deploy the strategy in locations in Southampton, NY, Boston, Los Angeles, Toronto and Montreal. Club Monaco has 140 stores total.
It remains to be seen whether the preliminary success of the pop-up strategy in a New York City flagship can translate to other parts of the U.S. and Canada. But Club Monaco isn't the first brand or retailer to experiment with the strategy.
Furniture retailer West Elm, for instance, recently opened a store concept in Santa Monica, CA, which hosts rotating pop-ups for local artists and makers, according to the Los Angeles Times. The store is a complement to the chain's LOCAL Experience program, which provides one-on-one learning resources outside of the store for customers interested in crafts, such as woodworking and welding.
And when it comes to mall retailers, some of the biggest recent news has been about Macy's use of in-store pop-ups in pursuit of a turnaround. The mall anchor recently announced the acquisition of a small stake in b8ta, a platform it plans to use to supercharge and expand its in-store rotating pop-up concept, The Market @ Macy's.
In addition to individual retailer tenants, malls themselves have been looking toward pop-up retail to keep things fresh and attract new foot traffic.
For instance, late last year on Long Island, Roosevelt Field mall launched TheEdit@Roosevelt Field, a 3,500 square-foot space broken out into 20 to 200 square-foot pop-ups for otherwise online-only brands.