Pop up retail – online
Pop up retail isn’t of course limited to the offline world. Amazon provides widgets for your blog or website, read the story on Mashable, or the original story on Problogger. Pop up retail is also happening (popping up?) however fleetingly in transactional emails, RSS feeds, blogs and social networks and affiliate and aggregate websites, although this trend seems more in B2B than B2C which inthe main hasn’t got to grips with the opportunities offered by Permission Marketing.
Topshop do this well as I’ve mentioned before, they also do the best bit of all which is join up their online and offline activity. Did anybody see their ice cream van recently? Many UK retailers are really missing the opportunity to use the web to create a buzz about their stores online or offline. Mass interruption advertising is (slowly) dying and the retailers that succeed will be the ones that integrate all their marketing activity, seamlessly and do it well.
A couple of websites worth checking out that are interesting models for a newer, more original retail online world are osoyou.com (following the fashion trend of black, white and a colour), Topshop of course as well as Asos (which I’ve just realised has a cookie to remember your sex, or at least the section you last looked at).
With an announcement today of the iPhone I wonder if this might be the catalyst that retail needs to become more mobile and start using the mobile medium and its opportunities more. It’ll be interesting to watch and see who gets to grips with mobile retailing and when.
If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.