Trends in Pop-up Retail: Innovative Merchandising Driven by Flexible, Dependable Mobile Connectivity

Once considered experimental merchandising for adventurous retailers and cashstrapped entrepreneurs, pop-up stores have become an established national phenomenon and a legitimate means of testing product, generating buzz, building brand awareness, and driving sales for big-name retailers and ambitious upstarts alike. Growth in mobile broadband technology is expanding the possibilities for a diverse array of applications for mobile pop-up. Furthermore, the “fly-by-night” qualities that might have characterized early pop-ups have now been supplanted by dependable, secure infrastructure solutions that put temporary retail locations on par with their more permanent counterparts.

This paper explores the pop-up retail phenomenon, outlines the challenges and obstacles to successful implementation, and discusses existing, rapid-deployment solutions for connecting pop-up locations with mission-critical retail applications and the cloud. The first part of the paper will address the business case for pursuing a pop-up strategy; the second part will consider technology implementation
strategies that enable a rich and secure popup experience.