eBay and Target Use Holiday "Pop Up" Concepts: Will They Work?

(SAN FRANCISCO) – One might have thought that  so-called “pop up” retail would have worn out its welcome. Earlier this year, the Gap tested out alliances with Paris specialty shops Colette and Merci with moderate success, while Reebok experimented with a pop up gym in West Hollywood (aiming at building their gay target market? One can only speculate.)

Target Misses the Mark

This holiday 2009, Target announced a three-city tour of major urban centers, including New York, Washington, and San Francisco. The stores — called Target-To-Go — will sell fifty thrifty items for Christmas; from 99-cent tree ornaments to Sony’s PSP Go handheld video game player, as well as limited-edition pieces from Rodarte’s exclusive Target collection. Each store will also use Twitter to communicate the store location, products, and hints on where to find giant gift tags that have been planted, scavenger-hunt style, in each of the cities. Tags are worth anywhere from $10 – $500 each.

Today we visited the store and found it largely deserted — despite the fact that elsewhere stores and streets were jammed with shoppers. Was it the location, tucked down a gentrified alley away from the main shopping arteries, or was it simply because choosing items (vending machine style) from a display case and picking them up at a take-out window is just kind of…well, uninspiring?  Afterall, shopping is supposed to be fun and with consumers unable to spend as much as they normally would, other stores in the area were enjoying heavy crowds of looky-loos wanting to paw at the merchandise — and yes, buy. In fact today compared to Black Friday, we saw a lot more shopping bags.

Customers choose gift items from display cases with pricepoints and item numbers, fill out their provided checklist, then pick up their order at a window.

eBay Bids High on Retail Experiment

Last on the pop up bandwagon is eBay, with perhaps the most confusing and least developed concept yet to hit the market. Using eblasts, eBay announced that it would be offering a store-like environment in several U.S. cities with “trendy gifts, interactive kiosks, personal shoppers,  and plenty of things that make the season bright”(great copywriting!).

eBay’s Mobile Boutique in Michigan

In New York that took the form of a 5,500 square foot store on West 57^th, while in San Jose, California, it was what looked like a giant taco truck. But the mechanics of this marketing campaign is confusing. The eblast I received announced they would be in San Francisco’s Justin Hermann Plaza for one day only. Without showing any product, the dedicated website at www.ebayholiday.com, includes the weirdest navigation bar in recent memory: “Mobile Boutique | eBay Twitter | Green | Black Friday | Cyber Monday | Zhu-Zhu Pets”.

Zhu-Zhu Pets? Green? What am I supposed to do with this site? Suddenly eBay wants to play the bricks-and-mortar retail game except there is only one problem: there’s really nothing to put in the store.

From all accounts the “stores” are just a room full of computers and special celebrity auctioned items and product displays, with “personal shoppers” guiding you through your purchase. Isn’t this just the same thing I do at home — minus the hand-holding?

It all feels as though it was developed by a junior marketing team bent on taking their show on the road, only — there’s no show, just an empty stage. If anything, what pop up retail still manages to do is act as a more expensive billboard, bringing dimension to more conventional advertising and offering the opportunity to — in the better examples, like Gap or Target — zero in on a specific customer with a specific need.

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