PopUp Republic

Case Study: The Launch of a Pop-Up Store

In the summer of 2013, PopUp Republic approached the Brookline, Massachusetts, Economic Development Office with a proposal. It would oversee an effort to open and operate a pop-up shop marketplace in a particular district within an area of town called Brookline Village that historically had always been commercially challenged. Try as it might to energize that particular section of the neighborhood’s local economy, the business community had never come up with the magic formula that would take hold there.

On the whole, Brookline Village’s setting itself was quite charming, often bustling, and among long-time Brookline denizens, “The Village” had always had a particular allure. Its funky shops, eclectic and somewhat eccentric boutiques, and its ethnic restaurants had all given the neighborhood a unique personality that had been retained over the years. The Village also plays host to the iconic Puppet Showplace Theater, yoga studios, and holistic practitioners, and even a tucked-away television studio where PBS’s much-adored

America’s Test Kitchen cooking show is produced. A very active subway line runs through The Village with a perfectly situated station right in the heart of the area, and abutting Brookline Village is a major thoroughfare that provides a corridor between downtown Boston and the western suburbs.

But the area of The Village where PopUp Republic was suggesting that it would open up a pop-up shop did not draw pedestrian ...