Pop goes fashion This Diwali, a new way to shop as entrepreneurs hit your city with an eclectic mix

Noorie Sadarangani sprung a surprise on Mumbai with her “peepbox” style design-art studio Obataimu in January 2011. Its launch began with a viral video with clues and secret passwords leading shoppers to the location. Located in a dilapidated building in Kala Ghoda, Mumbai, Sadarangani’s Gentlemen’s Only Peepbox concept store—selling old-school Polaroid cameras, antique barber chairs, boxers and pyjamas—may have lasted only six months, till the structure it was housed in was pulled down, but it managed to get the city’s fashion circles talking. While Obataimu (Japanese for overtime) in its current avatar is a tiny 200 sq. ft store tucked away next to Kala Ghoda Café, Sadarangani says her idea for setting up the peepbox was very clear: “to test the market and create interest in the brand in an unconventional way”.

This transient and gimmicky quality of the pop-up shop format has captured the imagination of the retail world. While internationally brands like Topshop, Target, JC Penney and Tommy Hilfiger are increasingly relying on flash retail strategies, luxury brands are also looking at them as an opportunity to create a buzz around their labels. Besides Gucci, Chanel, Hermes and Prada setting up temporary stores in the last year, Dior Homme opened the doors to a pop-up boutique in SoHo, New York City, in April and Chanel unveiled a beauty pop-up store in Covent Garden, London, in July. Louis Vuitton is the latest in line to launch its collaboration with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama with seven pop-up shops around the globe beginning early July.While pop-up stores are seen as short-term sale spaces within the larger retail format (shop-in-shop) or as a stand-alone construct, retailers are finding the concept malleable and experimental enough to play around with.
Maithili Ahluwalia of Mumbai-based Bungalow 8, who is currently hosting Glocal 012, a 12-part pop-up series featuring designers from across the globe “who are creating locally while thinking globally”, has just opened with Lebanese designer Dareen Hakim’s limited edition collection of handbags displayed via a unique installation within her Colaba store. “We’ve always had trunk shows, so pop-up for me is just a modern, chic and more elaborate version of the same. In a pop-up format, a designer is essentially able to express the brand’s aesthetic by redesigning the space and making it their own,” says Ahluwalia.
Over the course of the year, the Bungalow 8 sales floor (this could be any section of the store) will transform for pop-ups by clothes brand Injiri by Chinar Farooqui from Jaipur, New York-based jewellery label Gemma Redux, bikini designer Tara Matthews from London and jewellery designer Tara Thadani from Singapore, among others. And with every change Ahluwalia expects customer interest in her nearly decade-old store to grow. “We’ve always believed in keeping retail very exciting. And introducing new talents on a regular basis provides a wonderful opportunity to do that,” she says.

Limited edition: Maithili Ahluwalia of Bungalow 8, Mumbai, has organized a pop-up event to showcase Lebanese designer Dareen Hakim’s handbags; and (left) a bag from SquareKey’s upcoming Popup Shop. Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint

Cecilia Morelli-Parikh and her partners at concept lifestyle store Le Mill in Wadi Bunder, are using pop-ups to raise awareness about their fashion and lifestyle store across the country. Starting in April with a store-in-store pop-up at the Maison Boutique in Bangalore, Le Mill went on to set up an independent five-day store, curated across 6,000 sq. ft of blank space at One Style Mile in Mehrauli, Delhi, in May.“We completely took the space over, painted it and made furniture to display specifically for the location,” says Morelli-Parikh. And while Le Mill is looking at an outpost in the Capital in the near future, this was just a way of introducing the discerning Delhi buyer to their aesthetic and bouquet of brands—“as a precursor to opening a store there”. And the lessons learnt via the five-day exercise were valuable. “The Delhi customer is incredibly sophisticated and knows all about brands; from the tiniest stationery brand to more important fashion brands. A lot of people said Delhi was all about bling but I found that to be absolutely untrue,” she says.
Happy with the response, Le Mill intends to organize a pre-Diwali pop-up shop in Delhi in October to strengthen their presence in the Capital, and hopes to tap potential markets in Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai in the future. While Bungalow 8 currently maintains a small pop-up store at the Four Seasons Hotel in central Mumbai, Ahluwalia is also looking to test Delhi waters by the end of the year.
Mumbai store Atosa is stepping out of the confines of its physical walls and making plans to take its multi-designer format to smaller cities like Nagpur and Ahmedabad during the days leading up to Diwali. “With the pop-up format, we manage to target new audiences and test new markets without investing a lot of money as we carry current stock for sale,” says partner Azmina Rahimtoola.
Besides fashion stores, several online brands, like Pernia’s Pop-Up Shop (www.perniaspop upshop.co) and SquareKey (www.squarekey.com) are also using the format to build an offline connection with their online customers. Pernia Qureshi organized two physical pop-ups in Ludhiana and Delhi in May, around the time she launched her retail site. “It’s a good way to spread awareness and give people a chance to see products up close. If they buy at the pop-up and are aware of the website, then there are very high chances they will buy online too,” says Qureshi.
For Avantika Daing of SquareKey, the Popup Shop series is integral to the site’s marketing and customer acquisition process. And it is not a one-time event but an ongoing pan-India plan. “While most Indian e-commerce sites work on the sales and last-season clothes model, we offer current season lines from brands like Nanette Lepore, BCBG Max Azria, Nicole Miller, Trina Turk, etc., at competitive prices,” says Daing. In order to raise awareness, SquareKey will embark on a series of Popup Shop initiatives in north and south Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Delhi this month.
While suburb-specific and cross-country pop-ups gain popularity, store owners are interested in exploring international opportunities. Qureshi is in the process of planning an international pop-up store, details of which are still under wraps, Atosa will travel to Dubai in October and Jakarta in the following months. Both Obataimu and Bungalow 8 are eyeing markets in New York and Tokyo, raring to test themselves as “global” brands.