My first experience in a Pop-Up store was vintage clothing sold in a truck as a consumer experience that was ridding thought New-York City. After this experience you have an hard time seeing a luxury pop-up store.
A pop up store is a temporary retail space that can sell anything. It was first seen in the world of retail in the 1990 in larges cities. Everything consumable has been at one point or an another sold into a pop store. This was made even more obvious when I went to visit the Hermes Lavomatic Wash themed pop up. This summer Hermes decided to travel across major US cities with a silk wash pop up store themed.
The question that came to my mind is why a brand access on timelessness would choose to include temporary as a new business model?
This is an interesting paradox to analyze.
It is good to say that anybody can set up a pop-up shop. There is nothing more democratic than the pop-up.
According to the popular website Shopify those are the reason why pop store exist as a retail form and the step by step on how to open a pop-up store: https://www.shopify.com/guides/ultimate-guide-to-pop-up-shops/why-run-a-pop-up. The pop up create for each and every brand three main things. It generate revenues, it create brand awareness and a customer engagement.
The luxury business models is in any point different.
However, it did create an effect of total surprise. Isn’t that surprising when you know that you have to be on a waiting list for an Hermes bag to be able to walk into an Hermes Pop-up store. The theme was the Hermes wash. The second total novelty was the theme. The Andy Wharol Brillo inspiration to the Hermes Wash. I was welcomed by selling representative in white camisole with a sixties head band. I would have preferred a men in a white camisole sincerely. This theme was actually really surprising and give a fresh perspective to Hermes in my mind. It was focused just on Les Carres d’ Hermes.
This particular pop up had a theme that had a clear connection to something in temporal in the art world. There was this clear echo with the Andy Wharold Brillio installation but instead this was an Hermes wash Box disposed all over on the walls and on the front window along with Les Carres. This theme created a sense of interaction with the space.
However, the luxury and especially with Hermes those are objects made for life an objet pour la vie. To see it into a temporary installation that was almost an art installation really made me wonder.
Is luxury trying to expend by doing such moves or is it trying to promote the brand ?
The pop-up by nature has endless creative limits in which way we give a consumer an experience.
If we really think about would I have gone to an Hermes store and photograph the store the way I did without the pop-up ? The answer is in the question and evidently no. I went as a potential customer in order to know what was this about. I personally moved to this point to have this experience of the Hermes Wash theme. Consequently, it is a successful retail strategy it makes the customer move or in my case intrigue. Other luxury brands has done pop-up store in the past but I will not write about that because the pop-up store is really a retail experience.
Here is my third point it changes the customer experience. From the vintage clothing in a truck to the luxury Hermes art installation pop-up. Each time my experience was different. As a matter of fact our generations and the up coming generations are experiences savy. The fact that we are constantly stimulated to get our attention make those generations wanting more that just look at that or a nice display. There is a culture of the experience that is being created and cultivated right now. An experience that you can share and then the object pour la vie/ or the object for life become something more something that you actually lived with. Everything fades away in the face of death. However, experience makes you feel alive. The pop-up store if you do it well does creates this for you. For example, I did not went to an Hermes store I went to experience the Hermes Wash. I of course was redirect by a lovely card to their Boutiques in New-York. However, my experience of it was fantastic.
Finally, if the temporary is being metamorphose into an in temporal concept experience which was the case, it is being successful. It gave a new perspective on the brand. It gave a new pulse to the Hermes Story as well. That was innovative, gentle and surprising. This is part of what luxury is. Monsieur Bernard Arnault has a book called the Creative Passion. The title really reflect the essence of luxury this constant search for novelty and innovation. This desire of the new mix with an historic rooted DNA and codes. Luxury is more than an expensive object or a certain idea of elite. Luxury is the capacity of transcending time. It is this access to immortality. In order to cultivate and grow this access you need to metamorphose your strategies. A gorilla marketing move such as a pop-up store is much more than a temporary retail space, with the passion of creativity you can really transcend it into an experience. In that sense it is in temporal. For example, the result is that to this day I remember the display, I lost all of my pictures when I lost my phone but still remember the locations what I saw around the conversation with my mother that I had and the experience that the Hermes Wash could give me. Even premium brand can give moment of luxury thought a pop-up.
To conclude the universe of luxury is fascinating of experience. First of all, money is tool to access to more of the potential that life can give. To more humanity, to more beauty, perfection, history and story what makes us human. People have no difficulties combining H&M with Hermes as part of their identity. The relationship to luxury and branding in general is evolving and pop-up are wonderful ways of bringing this evolution.
Since I have lost all my photos from this pop up I have decided to bring what we do best which is the creative passion and I am creating a portfolio for Hermes. Hermes will have an entire portfolio we are done with the first part. For this we are created a Modern Odyssey where the journey is being celebrated. The legend wants Plato who condemn the human creativity slept with the Homer Odyssey under his pillow. This is the paradox that immortalized the text of Plato. Why a men who condamn would actually love what he condamn most.
We live in a world of followers and as Jack Ma says “ headache copy cats” where difference and progressed is being bullied where originality is being threatened. So like Ulysse make the journey count more than the vengeance. Where the woman can be a creative force and be an Ulysse more than a Penelope. Like Homer wrote it in his song/ poems because the book is divided into “chants”, your challenges and failures can be overcome into triumphs. Make the fatality in the story of the gods a push though and create your journey. There is no destination but life is nothing more than a journey and with that you can have des objets pour la vie/ object for life.
