Doing a Retail Pop-Up Store?

Five Things You Need to Know About Doing a Retail Pop Up Shop

Posted by Ferron Salniker | Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013

To pop-up or not to pop-up? Pop-ups can be a great way to expose your brand to new markets, meet your online customers face-to-face, and create another revenue source, but what should you consider before doing one? Here are a few things to think about:

1. Determine the right kind of space for your business. “Finding he right space depends on the length of time a company wants to do a pop-up,” said Matt Ellsworth, VP of Growth at Storefront, a marketplace for short-term retail space. For a short term situation, look for event spaces, hotel lobbies, or marketplaces that regularly feature pop-ups like Firehouse 8. For a few weeks, look at shopping centers, kiosks and space at current retailers. Vacant stores in busy neighborhoods are good for long term pop-ups, but be aware that landords will be looking for tenants to sign 3-6 month leases.

2. Make a staffing plan. Is your company a one-man/woman show? Look for a space that will allow you to get other work done while you’re there, either at a desk or a back office. If you’ll be moving staff from a permanent location be sure to consider how the shifts may differ from your regular hours. “When we agreed to the pop-up we had assumed that the hours would be from 11 to 7, the same as our Valencia Street store,” said Jen D’Angelo, owner of SFMade clothing line Nooworks, which held a pop-up in the Westfield Shopping Center during the holiday season. “But the mall opens from 9 to 9 during the holidays, so we had to create two shifts.” D’Angelo also shared the kiosk with another brand, allowing her to share staff when needed.

3. Get the most bang for your buck. Ellsworth argues that earning revenue with a pop-up is more feasible than most people think, if you keep your spending down when buying fixtures and décor. “You can bring in temporary fixtures, and consumers are fine with that. Find ways to cut corners and get creative so that you can use it as a vehicle to make money,” he said. D’Angelo’s experience was profitable because she swooped in on a last minute space and was able to negotiate a low rent and bring in another designer to share.

4. Do as much research as you can beforehand, and then do some more. Doing market research on a pop-up space may be difficult if you are given an unexpected or last-minute opportunity, so be prepared to change up merchandise a few days in. Make sure your staff is paying attention to what people are spending, where else they’re shopping, and what products are going fastest. “I initially brought in older inventory that we could mark down to a lower price point, but because we were located in front of Bloomingdales I found that we had a different clientele, so I remerchandised the store two days into it,” said D’Angelo.

5. Promote, promote, promote. Pop-ups are a great opportunity to to interact with your customers offline, but you have to get them there. Don’t stop at your social media channels, much of doing a pop-up is about generating brand awareness, so take it as an opportunity to get in touch with new outlets. Reach out to the neighborhood merchant association, send press releases out to blogs and local media, and make sure any brands you are partnering with are doing the same.

Want to see an SFMade pop-up in action? Visit dripmodule in the Westfield. Read the San Francisco Chronicle article about the SFMade pop-up at the Westfield. For more information about Storefront, click here.

Five Things You Need to Know About Doing a Retail Pop Up Shop

 

Storefront, a Pop-up Matchmaker, Expands to New York

Helps retail brands find short-term space

The Storenvy pop-up store in San Francisco. | Photo: Amy Harrity

As the retailers of all sizes get smitten with the pop-up store bug, the real estate business, with its multi-year leases, is struggling to keep up. Enter Storefront, an online matchmaker for pop-up stores and landlords, which launched in New York and Brooklyn June 26 after a short beta period.

Similar to sharing-economy companies such as Airbnb (which matches local homeowners with travelers who need an overnight stay) Storefront is a startup Web site that connects retail brands with property owners willing to lease by the day, week or month. The San Francisco-based company says its goal is to make setting up a short-term offline store as easy as starting an online one.

National Geographic, for example, opened a 1,000-square-foot pop-up store in a historic converted firehouse in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood using Storefront, said co-founder and CEO Erik Eliason.  Since its founding six months ago, thestorefront.com has coordinated 100 pop-ups in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley and is currently working with several Fortune 500 brands, including large technology companies, he said.

Researcher IBISWorld found 2,380 pop-up shops in the U.S. in 2012. Many e-commerce companies are now looking for a way to meet their customers in person without the expensive overhead of a traditional store, Eliason said. And existing retail brands, like National Geographic, often want to be seen in creative spaces, including hotel lobbies, art galleries, coffee houses and book stores, he noted.

Prices on Storefront run the gamut, from $750 a day for 200 square feet in a co-working center in the San Francisco financial district, to $50 a day for 120 square feet in consignment shop in the Mission district. In New York, high-demand areas include Grand Central Terminal and various Brooklyn neighborhoods, said Eliason.

Another recent match in San Francisco was menswear company Northern Grade, which operated a one-day pop-up on Saturday, June 1 at 111 Minna Gallery, an art gallery and theater. The clothing company promoted the quickie store as a venue where brand loyalists could meet their favorite designers while enjoying music, spirits and local food.

Experts foresee a pop-up boom as traditional malls decline. With an enormous, four-story mall, it’s difficult to meet everyone’s inventory needs all the time, said Wharton marketing professor David Bell. But at the same time, it is limiting for retailers to rely only on ecommerce. “Shoppers are seduced by the notion that pop-ups offer one-off opportunities, not to be repeated,” said Tim Denison, director at Ipsos Retail Performance. Unlike online shopping, ”pop-ups focus on visually powerful propositions that draw people’s attention.”

With the New York launch, Storefront will also help stores with their insurance, contracts, fixtures, staff and signage needs.

Adweek – June 26th, 2013

Helps retail brands find short-term space

Are Pop-up Stores Here to Stay?

Published : May 22, 2013 in Knowledge@Wharton

If old-time department stores were comprehensive, mom-and-pop stores friendly and big-box always low price, what kind of message does pop-up retail whisper into the ear of today’s customer?

“New, fun, something different,” says Wharton marketing professor Barbara E. Kahn. “Innovation and intrigue,” says pop-up leasing agent ChristinaNorsig, CEO/founder of PopUpInsider. Adds Wharton marketing professor Stephen J. Hoch

Stephen J. Hoch: It’s about trying to “get people there all at the same time to create additional excitement, because it’s a pop-up, and it’s not going to be there much longer.”

As a concept, many industry experts say pop-up is here to stay, because it strikes both business owners and customers as a cure for the sense of retail ennui that has permeated the industry since the start of the recession. Pop-up has several distinct manifestations, but the basic format is that a retailer looking to sell something with a short shelf life, launch a brand or build awareness opens a storefront for a few days or weeks. Displays are put up, product is stocked, business is conducted and buzz created — and then it’s gone.

A classic example of the genre showed up this month on Philadelphia’s Walnut Street, the city’s high-end retail spine. Vancouver-based online custom menswear retailer Indochino brought in sample swaths of seersucker and charcoal wool plaids, set up curtained booths and let loose a small army of genial sales associates and tailors.

In a space left vacant years ago by Sharper Image but directly across the street from a bustling Brooks Brothers, young men and “fit specialists” together chose fabrics, lapel width and button placement while conferring about style preferences. The whole staging — which Indochino has also taken to New York, Boston and Washington, D.C. — is designed to last just a few days. Four weeks after the fitting, sartorial splendor arrives in a box from Shanghai. “People know we’re just going to be here a short time, so there’s a sense of urgency,” says senior fit specialist Beth Watson. Walk-ins were welcome, but dozens booked appointments online for each day of the two and a half-week visit. At between $379 and $699 per suit — generally cheaper than custom-made suits at a bricks-and-mortar store — it all added up to some serious business.

Meanwhile, those who miss the pop-up store can take a web tutorial and measure themselves. Says Watson: “Guys don’t always like to go shopping, but they are increasingly comfortable [doing it] online, so once we have your measurements, you’re all set.”

 

Scaring Up Sales Beyond Halloween

 

Superhero costumes and rubber witch masks are what many shoppers associate with pop-up because of the rash of temporary stores that arrive from late summer to just after Halloween. But pop-up began earlier, in London and Tokyo, before spreading to the U.S. mostly as a seasonal phenomenon. The sector is still green — so much so that it’s not yet tracked as a distinct sub-genre of retail.

The online/print publication Specialty Retail Report estimates the temporary retail sector as an $8 billion a year industry, although that figure includes not only pop-ups but also kiosks and shopping-mall carts.  Researcher IBISWorld found 2,380 pop-up shops in the U.S. in 2012, (68.1% of which were Halloween-themed), up from 2,043 three years earlier.

But many say those numbers aren’t capturing all of the activity, which now includes stores within stores such as the ones established by eyewear sensation Warby Parker. “Any brand you can think of is in a pop-up or temporary store,” says Erik Eliason, co-founder of Storefront, a San Francisco-based startup that matches pop-up retail projects with landlords willing to rent out a space for a short period.

Halloween stores were followed by other, more diverse, pop-ups that filled the vacuum left after large chain bankruptcies and closings. “There’s just a lot of inventory still out there,” says Hoch, referring to excess retail space. “All construction has stopped; there hasn’t been a major mall built in 10 years. We’re malled out, but there is still plenty of real estate out there. Either it can sit empty or you can try to do something with it. A landlord would rather make two months’ rent on a space than no rent.”

One of the first big forays into pop-ups came not from one of the smaller, more nimble retailers, but from a behemoth. Well before the recession, in 2002, Target opened a Christmas store at the Chelsea Piers on the Hudson in New York. The temporary store received huge publicity and fired the imagination of other retailers who began to imagine pop ups in other sites never before exploited for their marketplace potential. As Norsig wrote in her book, Pop-Up Retail: How You Can Master this Global Marketing Phenomenon: “If a pier by the river could work, how about a penthouse? A subway station? A parking space?”

Target has since done 20 pop-ups, mostly in the U.S. “As pop-ups have become increasingly popular, Target continually looks for ways to reinvent this concept with unique twists to ensure each experience feels unique and special for our guests,” says a Target spokeswoman. After that, pop-ups began popping up all over — shoe and computer companies, airlines, makeup manufacturers. American chef Thomas Keller brought a French Laundry pop-up to Harrods in London for 10 days in 2011, offering nine courses for £250 ($400).

Kahn likens the phenomenon to the psychology of luxury brands, in which an element beyond the product itself becomes a form of currency. “If too many people wear it, it’s not a luxury anymore,” she says.

“There’s a paradox if you sell too much of something. Perhaps that is some of what’s going on. It’s a way to make it exclusive and special because of the time period.”

Pop-ups have divergent business goals. They can be a good way to test a product, dip a toe in a particular location without a long-term lease, make a splash with a brand introduction in a new region, lighten overstocked product through a focused seasonal offering, or establish brand awareness during a special event such as a street festival.

 

Opera Companies and Orchestras

 

Non-profits have grabbed hold of the concept, with horticultural societies turning plots of rubble into gardens for a growing season, and opera companies and orchestras engineering pop-up performances in train stations and public markets. These flash performances are typically edited into video pieces used to expand the organization’s footprint beyond the regular constituency via social media.

What’s in it for landlords? “It’s actually very simple,” says Peter Eizen, one of the owners of 1518 Walnut St., the Philadelphia building used this month by Indochino. “Most of these companies have a budget, and they come to you and say, ‘This is what we can pay,’ and you either say OK or no thank you. In this case, they are not paying market rate, but as a landlord, it’s a good way to get something out of nothing.”

“We’ve seen all kinds of arrangements,” adds Eliason. “Some [landlords] take a flat fee; others take a percentage of the rent. Less common is a percentage of sales, since we’re still in the early days of temporary retail, and typically stores don’t have the systems built for tracking sales.”

The idea has evolved from stopgap to being a bona fide genre that many say is now helping to bridge the treacherous chasm between the worlds of online and bricks-and-mortar retail. Wharton marketing professor David Bell points to the promise of models like Bonobos, in which clothing customers do a certain amount of perusing and research online, but then come into a shop for the other part of the experience, like touching various materials and getting fitted.

“I think the idea of having a big, enormous four-story building where people come in and take something away is changing,” says Bell. “It’s a fundamentally inefficient system in some sense. It’s very difficult from an inventory standpoint to make sure you have everything everyone needs all the time. People are just not searching for products the way they were 20 years ago. There is an awareness that everyone needs to be both offline and online.”

Many are sufficiently convinced of the symbiotic relationship between e-commerce and bricks and mortar to begin seeking new modes of interplay. Allison Berliner, who graduated with a Wharton MBA this month, has watched customers walk into a store, handle a piece of merchandise — and then go home and order it online from someone else.

The practice, called “showrooming,” is an obviously troubling development for bricks and mortar retailers who don’t also have an online presence. But Berliner and fellow student Shannon Pierce developed a business plan for the Pop Shop, a system that matches retailers and customers by featuring merchandise online and placing it in stores within stores. The Pop Shop, Berliner says, is essentially an online answer to the consignment shop with considerably more sophisticated bells and whistles.

“The balance of power is shifting,” notes Berliner. “It seems to us that bricks and mortar is not going away, but its role is changing. If a store can’t address those needs, or if online can’t address them, neither is going to thrive.”

Berliner sees the Pop Shop as a matchmaker. Online brands register with the Pop Shop platform with information on their products and target customer. The Pop Shop recommends pre-existing stores in its network. The brand sets up a display, with product, in the store, along with promotional material that can be used to track sales. The display stays up for a short time, perhaps a month.

The proposal won a grant from the Wharton Fund for Innovation, and the Pop Shop will be testing its concepts as it pitches the idea to investors. Revenues are collected from participating brands and commissions from sales. Berliner envisions an opportunity to scale the concept across a broad spectrum, from smaller retailers who may not have the money to invest in online, to “Nordstrom, which is rethinking the in-store experience. If we can get really good at what we do, become really good at matching [brands with stores], there’s no reason it wouldn’t work for them.”

“I really like what she’s doing,” says Wharton’s Bell of the Pop Shop. “Entrepreneurs who are primarily e-commerce who get retailers into a physical space as a way to interact — I think that’s an idea that has some legs. Both parties have something to gain from this. You have a space that’s not being used in the best possible manner, and you have people who don’t have a physical space, and you bring them together.”

 

Pop-Up: Signaling Potential — or Decline?

 

The other potential benefit of pop-up retail is demonstrating that a vacant space can become viable again.

Norsig says she has had pop-up clients whose businesses in effect helped to market a property, resulting in a sale and reuse of the building.

But strength is not always the message that comes across. “I see two classes of what’s going on,” notes Phil Magnuson, principal with Manhattan-based SBLM Architects, which designs for pop-up retailers.

“There’s the thoughtful approach to getting the e-customer more informed about what the retailer is all about, and then there’s the other one, taking advantage of a weak market.”

When stores are designed right, in an already-vibrant urban context, pop-up can add a frisson to the streetscape. “If it’s a thoughtful gesture and it’s got some engagement behind it, I think it’s great,”

Magnuson says. “I think in a secondary location, if you were looking for a place to put a store and, say, there are two pop-ups on the street and some other empty stores, you would not be encouraged to open a business there. I think the neighborhood would be discouraged, and it only adds insult to injury.”

Several experts in the field say that with media as diffuse as it is today, pop-up, in its highest form, might just be viewed as an enormous, three-dimensional piece of advertising. “I do think, for several reasons, that the face of retailing is changing,” says  Wharton’s Kahn, “because the face of advertising has changed so radically. There’s no “Ed Sullivan Show” on Sunday night that everyone watches, so everybody is looking for new ways to get the message out.”

In fact, some people, including Hoch, say pop-up stores are mostly useful for their marketing and promotional awareness rather than for making money. While Halloween stores are the big money makers promotional awareness rather than for making money. While Halloween stores are the big money makers in the category, “the other ones are not about making money, but brand-building,” he suggests. Others say that what businesses get back from pop-ups hinges on how much thought is put into the location, what rent is negotiated, the design of the store — and how one defines success.

For a French fragrance company, Norsig found a reasonable rent on New York’s tony Madison Avenue for 30 days around holiday time. The company left after building brand awareness and turning a tidy profit. Other deals have different aims. “It depends on what the goals are,” she says. “I sat down with a big fashion company that was exclusively online and wanted to open a store on 57th Street. We came up with a plan, did a P&L and figured out that the store would absolutely operate at a loss, and they decided not to do it.” But determining how that street presence might have translated into long-term sales would have been difficult. “If the goal was brand awareness, it’s hard to quantify that.”

One thing working against pop-ups, Norsig notes, is a time-element that

leaves little room for error. “As a temporary tenant, you don’t have the same rights. And what if there’s a taxi strike or inclement weather? If you only have 12 days in a space, every day counts.”

 

This is a single/personal use copy of Knowledge@Wharton. For multiple copies, custom reprints, e-prints, posters or plaques, please contact

PARS International: reprints@parsintl.com P. (212) 221-9595 x407.

All materials copyright of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Page 4 of 4

Are Pop-up Stores Here to Stay?: Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=3264)

Zero Halliburton – Fly through of Flagship Store Conceptual Design

Zero Halliburton is developing a flagship retail location in New York City. The Displayers were asked to develop conceptual designs and renderings of the environment. Using current marketing materials to identify merchandise and advertising, renderings of the stores interior and exterior from the streets view were created. Below is a fly-through video of the stores exterior and proposed renderings of the environments interior.

Zero Halliburton

DESIGN ACTIVE JOBS 2012Displayers-12zerohalliburtonZEROHALL nyc s

NYC x Design

Christine Quinn on Tapping New York’s Vein of Design

New York Times – Currents | Events / By JULIE LASKY / Published: February 13, 2013

After months of vigorous planning, New York will have a 12-day celebration of design this spring extending over all five boroughs. NYC x Design will run from May 10 to 21, to coincide with the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and Frieze New York art fair on Randalls Island. Pronounced “NYC by Design” and interdisciplinary in scope, it will present the work of local designers and architects in museum exhibitions, conferences, studio tours, showroom displays, pop-up stores, art installations and a design film festival.

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times NYTCREDIT: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

The goal is greater visibility for an industry with untapped economic potential, said City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn (left), whose office is leading the project with a steering committee of more than 30 design leaders from business, civic and cultural groups. “We have more designers in New York City than any other U.S. city, but we do a terrible job promoting them in their totality,” she said.

Ideally, the festival would seed itself over time and multiply the number of New York design jobs, she said. In the future, “if we’re doing it right, there’s more set designers in Brooklyn and Queens, more furniture designers in Brooklyn and more jewelry designers in the South Bronx and Lower East Side.”

Festival events can be found at NYCxDesign.com, a Web site that was introduced this week. The program will continue to be updated.

 

Link to The New York Times Article

Glamour Wall – Video

For Fashion Week rather than creating a Pop-up store, Glamour Magazine created a Pop-up wall co-sponsored with CO Bigalow.  The event and wall introduced Glamour’s use of QR code on the Pop-up Wall and online.  We are grateful to Glamour Magazine for allowing The Displayers to share this video.

 

The Displayers we responsible for the design, construction and installation on the Pop-up wall.  During Fall 2012 New York Fashion Week, Glamour was all about instant beauty gratification with our Glamour Apothecary Wall, in NYC’s Meatpacking District. Readers lined up to shop the wall using their mobile wallet, the Glamour Friends & Fans app. Take a look at how we made it all happen, from construction to the big unveiling.

 

Kellogg’s Pop-Up Store

 

 

 

The exact value of a positive tweet about a brand has been officially pinpointed: It’s worth a bag of new Special K chips. At least, that’s the going rate at the new Kellogg’s Tweet Shop in London—a pop-up store that’s giving away bags of the new product in exchange for a little love on Twitter. Visitors to the store can pick out one of three prefab tweets to send—or they can come up with their own, which might be less informational but could seem more authentic, too. They get a free snack in return. “The value of positive endorsements on social media sites is beyond compare, so we’re excited to be the first company to literally use social currency instead of financial currency to launch this new product in our bespoke Special K shop,” says brand manager Sarah Case. British agency Slice worked on the campaign, which is a tasty development indeed. Photo: Ken Lennox.

September 27, 2012, 2:06 PM EDT – Adweek

Kellogg’s Pop-Up Store Lets You Pay for Snacks With a Tweet A literal view of social currency

6 Tips to Managing Client Expectations

6 Tips to Managing Client Expectations
Inc. Magazine
Michael A. Olguin
May 7, 2012

These tips will help you build longstanding relationships that can withstand the good times as well as the bad.

So much work goes into winning new business, regardless of the vertical space in which you work; there is the initial prospecting, early conversations, strategic program development, budget consideration, and creation of a deliverables timeline. Unfortunately, all of that work can come to a screeching halt before the ink is dry on the contract when the same amount of time, energy and commitment isn’t placed on managing the client’s expectations after the business is won.

To ensure this is never overlooked, we developed the Super Six: keys to developing excellent client expectations and building longstanding relationships that can withstand good times as well as bumps in the road. After all, it’s easy to keep a client when things are going well; maintaining a client when times are tough is the true test of a relationship. We believe the Super Six will aid in this process:

1. Build a relationship that goes beyond client/vendor I have long maintained that business people like working with people they not only respect, but also personally like. Therefore, we believe that developing a personal relationship goes a long way in building a stronger business relationship. Get to know the client’s family situation, how they spend their free time, where their interests lie and, most importantly, what motivates them on a daily basis. When you understand what makes them tick as a person, you can translate that into your business relationship.

2. Regularly communicate and address problems directly A lack of communication is usually at the root of most problems associated with clients. Any good client relationship will be able to weather setbacks if you are proactive in communicating both good and bad news. When communication is direct and transparent, trust forms and helps to create a foundation for long-lasting relationships.

3. Agree on strategy, goals and timelines Until you and your client agree on strategy, goals and timelines, you are always at risk of them not understanding what success is and how it should be measured. We always suggest creating a scope-of-work document that outlines the program details, budgets and metrics. This will alleviate any confusion over expectations and hopefully eliminate a difficult conversation.

4. Be a  Agree on strategy, goals and timelines When you offer your client advice, direction, input and business counsel, you become a truly valuable partner. This style of open dialogue helps to establish the respect necessary to ensure better project management. Clients hire outsourced marketing services because they want an objective opinion. If you fail at giving that POV, you subject yourself to being a “yes man or woman,” which will ultimately be your undoing.

5. Be a good listener Listening is one of the most misunderstood and least used tools in managing client expectations. Many clients are unsure of what they are trying to accomplish or not very good at articulating it. As such, you must have excellent intuition and listening skills in order to identify key messages being communicated. One of the best ways to compensate for a client who communicates poorly is to repeat what you have heard and ask them to confirm the accuracy of key takeaways, which will ultimately impact expectations.

6. Budget is not a bad word Most relationships will go south very quickly if you are not open and honest about budgets. To start, you must be realistic about setting a clear understanding of the budget required to execute the desired program. Throughout the course of the program, you must have regular dialogue about budgets. If you don’t address the client until you have an issue (i.e., operating over budget), you will not only have an unhappy client, you may also find yourself eating the overages.

At the end of the day, your ability to manage client expectations is going to hinge on how well you choose to communicate. If you leave things up to chance, chances are you and your client will both be disappointed. However, if you take the time to listen, be proactive about communicating openly and address any issues head-on, you will keep client expectations in check and be in a good position to grow your relationship over time.

http://www.inc.com/michael-olguin/6-tips-to-managing-client-expectations.html

Pop-Ups Look for New Edge in Lean Times

 

Pop-ups have gained favor as a way of getting value out of vacant real estate while bringing an element of immediacy and surprise to the shopping experience. The concept lends itself to various types of businesses, so it’s no wonder media brands have gotten in on the pop-up action. Their goal: to capitalize on the holiday shopping season in the quest for new sources of revenue while promoting their core brands. But with consumers worried about job security and the economy, pop-ups have to do more than just hawk merchandise to get people to turn their heads. Here’s how some media companies are adopting the concept to hook visitors and, perhaps, new customers.

OpenSky Even e-tailers realize people sometimes want to see products in person. Social shopping site OpenSky, which gives consumers the chance to “shop with the stars,” already had a three-day pop-up that doubled as an art gallery, with products selected by its celebrity “curators” displayed like artwork for added novelty. Cynthia Rowley, Kelly Bensimon, and others showed up at the opening. Gimmicky displays included a floor-to-ceiling sculpture made of woks by celeb chef Ming Tsai and Guy Fieri-branded knives thrown, dart-like, into a wall of pastry mats.

Real SimpleAt its shop, the women’s magazine is selling affordable stocking stuffers from its December gift guide as well as Real Simple-branded books and products. Delivering on its “life made easier” promise, it’s also doling out tips on holiday entertaining, beauty, and gift giving, with food and lifestyle celebs like Mario Batali, Todd English, and Dylan Lauren making appearances.

RS Fest While others go the shopping route, Rolling Stone magazine has chosen to present a pop-up “park” in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. Complete with trees and benches, it’s where people can escape the lines, chill to live performances by bands like Dawes and Deer Tick, and check out iconic Rolling Stone covers. Naturally, you’d want a glass of wine to complete the experience, so visitors are offered free rock-inspired wines from Wines That Rock (a Woodstock chardonnay or a Grateful Dead red wine blend, perhaps?).

Wired Store Geekdom meets shopping at the tech magazine’s seventh annual holiday store, being held this year in a 10,000-square-foot Times Square space. Gawk at the iPhone dock made from a hollow tree trunk ($15,580) and Superplexus, a huge spherical maze ($30,000). Overwhelmed? Wired, with social/mobile startup Sonar, will divine the perfect gifts for you to buy simply by analyzing your social networks.

AdWeek: Startups take a page out of the fashion industries playbook

  • December 13, 2011, 4:39 AM EST