Pop-up store phenomenon moves to consumer sectors

The phenomenon of pop-up stores that started mostly with niche retail products is spreading to newer consumer sectors now. Kraft Foods will be setting up its first retail store in what was earlier the Terra Museum of American Art on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago for three days this month. Kraft Foods will turn to space into a pizzeria to create buzz for its new frozen pizza. Opening a pop-up store in a high profile area for a few days or weeks is a great and relatively inexpensive way to get attention from consumers as well as the media.
"How do you reach consumers when there are hundreds of TV channels and magazines, and people are editing out commercials? This is a chance for [marketers] to go directly to the consumer," said Mary Brett Whitfield, senior vice president at Retail Forward, a Columbus, Ohio-based retail market research firm.

Kraft follows on the heels of Lexus, which turned the same space at 666 N. Michigan Ave. into an art gallery in January for a month to show off its newest sedan. Before that, Motorola Inc. put a cell phone store there for six months. It was the first foray into traditional storefront retail for both manufacturers.
Trendsetting store Target was the first to come up with a pop-up store, when it set up shop in a boat off Chelsea Piers in 2002, after it was unable to get permanent real estate in Manhattan. After its amazing success, the company followed it the next year with its Isaac Mizrahi collection in a pop-up store at the Rockefeller Center in New York.

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