PopUp Republic

What Is Success?

Arguably, the most important thing that you can do when you are first thinking about your pop-up is to determine your end game. What is your goal? For some, it is to generate significant revenues. For chefs, perhaps it is to experiment with new menus and test new locations. For designers, maybe they want to see how responsive customers are to their work, before potentially opening up their own galleries or boutiques.

As a society, we often become bogged down by cultural pressures to make as much money as possible. For first-time pop-up organizers, this is the best advice that I can give: Don’t worry about the money. Success is all about expectations. More than likely, your first pop-up may provide you with meaningful income—or it may not. You will see that there are things you would do differently a second time (and you should definitely plan on hosting another pop-up—you’ll be amazed how much easier, and probably more lucrative, it is the second time around). If you go into your first one with the expectation that you are doing it for a reason other than the money, namely, that you might make some money but you will be obtaining an incredible learning experience for the next pop-up you host, you have a higher likelihood of completing the process from start to finish and achieving both customer and personal satisfaction at the end of the process.

No matter what type of pop-up you open, you need experience in order to have the confidence that you are going down ...