Once ephemeral and innovative, Pop-up container shops have flooded retailers around the globe. From ordinary, standard metal containers for sea freight! The very ones that dust in port warehouses in hundreds of thousands and regularly run along all sea trade routes.

The domination of the water was not enough for them - now they are taking over the land, having found wide application in architecture. Not only cafes and shops are made of them, but entire office buildings and even hotels are built. For example, the photo below shows FarmVille Cafe & Homestay in Sekinchan, Malaysia:

And why not? After all, prices for 20-foot sea containers in Ukraine will start from 25000 UAH. This is if you consider new, but for the purposes of retail trade will be suitable even used ... They are easy to find, simple and cheap to maintain and transport. It is hard to find a more affordable and universal way to experiment with the format Pop-up Shop.

Freight containers are used so massively and actively that some countries already lack the capacity to service them. If you google it, you can easily find the sites of companies that produce commercial real estate objects to order from standard 20 and 40 foot containers.

Pop-up shops strengthen the relationship between the customer and the brand

In case you've forgotten what the Pop-up format in retail is, it's temporary stores that can suddenly appear anywhere and disappear just as quickly. Suddenness and mobility are " tricks ", thanks to which they are compared with advertising windows of the same name that pop up in internet browsers.

Pop-up stores have the supernatural ability to revive the energy around a brand, product, retail outlet or special date. When well managed and designed for customer experience, they give users a unique opportunity to evaluate new products and explore the brand live.

What are the purposes for which retailers use Pop-up stores?

Pop-up stores are primarily used as a quick response tool and for market experiments. Through them, brands spread their influence and strengthen ties with their target audiences. They are affordable, versatile, flexible, mobile and temporary. Shop, boutique, cafe, bar, restaurant, event, gallery, studio, salon, workshop, promotion - all this can be easily realized in Pop-up Shop format.

Which Pop-up solutions in retail are the most popular:

 - IVENTS. Most often we see Pop-up Shops based on events for launching products, fast organization of brand presence at such events as exhibitions, festivals, conferences, etc.

Example: Adidas Pop-up store for the March of Madness Elite 8 game at the University of Kansas

 - MARKET TESTING. It's Pop-up stores focused on location. They allow you to investigate the amount and composition of traffic, the level of sales figures. Brands, most often franchises, use this format to see if a particular location is suitable for a permanent branch/franchise location.

Example: an eBay store that has suddenly grown somewhere in the United States

 - CLICKS & BRICKS is an integrated business model that combines traditional sales with E-commerce. If an online brand wants to develop its customer base and grow offline, it arranges a promotion in Pop-up format.

Example: College Tour by BeautyKind brand

- SEASONAL SALES of products and services that are usually purchased at certain times of the year. Beachwear, Christmas decorations, sledges, valentines, makeup and Halloween costumes. Pop-up shops allow companies that specialize in one or more seasonal products to use the retail space (and pay for its rent) only in those months that make sense for such business.

Example: a holiday Frey Easter Holiday Pop-Up Shop

- COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE MANAGEMENT. Owners of retail spaces can use Pop-up solutions from freight containers as an urgent measure in response to a sharp increase in job vacancies. In these circumstances, retail owners will be renting out empty space in their shopping centres, multifunctional complexes, to base temporary shops or incubators to run local start-ups.

Example: Boxpark Market in East End - East London

Freight containers - ideal solution for Pop-up

If you sum up all the advantages of the Pop-up format, creating such shops from sea containers becomes extremely convenient and cheap. The possibilities of design and modification are limited only by your imagination and budget, and if necessary, you can always find a complete turnkey solution.

This is the present and future of global retailing. In order to better feel the potential of Pop-up shops from containers, in addition we will give you more examples from the real practice of foreign retailers.

Pop-up coffee shop from the container:

Pop-up format retail space from containers:

Mobile Pop-up bar made of containers:

A 24-hour Pop-up food shop from a container:

Pop-up showroom made of containers: