Pop-Up! The Permanence of the Temporary Retail Space

It was back in 2004 that Comme des Garçons blazed a trail by opening the temporary retail space they called a ‘guerilla shop,’ Since then pop-up spaces dot our retail landscape, and particularly in the past five years, have expanded into pop-up restaurants, exhibits, and music festivals. Their success is down to their here-today-gone-tomorrow nature which appeals to our FOMO culture, but are we nearing the point of peak pop-up status? In an effort to understand why the concept of the pop-up still pops we interviewed the founders of online retailer, Bishop Collective, Mai Vu and Dimitri Koumbis, who have just launched their first pop-up retail space in Manhattan’s Soho after four years of strictly online business.