Leading architects come together for new design event The Fix


FX collaborated with Gensler, Livewire and Cole Consulting to bring together property, retail and design with this new initiative, The Fix. At its launch, we focused on the pop-up and the implications for the retail, hotel and the hospitality, and property sectors. How creative are pop-ups — and how is money made from them? Toby Maxwell reports


FX

Some of the leading lights of the business, property, architecture and designs worlds gathered recently for the launch event of The Fix, conceived to facilitate creative and productive conversations, ideas and working relationships.

Jon Tollit, principal at Gensler, said: 'We brought together a wide variety of people from all kinds of different areas and sectors because we felt that they all had an important role to play in the future. 'If you look around the world today, it's changing. We're not in a dormant situation where we're waiting for the old volcano to erupt again. We're in a different environment that demands that we do things differently and think differently.

'It's all about collaboration - bouncing ideas off of people that you've never met and thinking new ideas that you never dreamed of before. The tried-and-tested is more about testing and trying now.'

fix

The Fix took place at The Dead Dolls House, a pop-up events venue in Hoxton Square, London. The beautiful old building is being demolished in favour of a striking redevelopment designed by Zaha Hadid, but in the meantime has been turned into a temporary-yet-smart London hang-out and a popular location for a meeting of creative minds.

'I admire the people who are being creative regardless of the tough business situation they might find themselves in,' added Tollit. 'That's fantastic and should be supported, but we have to understand that model and how it can work now, in the future, and even in better economic times. In terms of individuality - but for the common good - the question is, what can we do together to come up with new ideas and to implement them?"

Fix

He added that the idea behind The Fix was not only to create a series of 'networking' events but also to create a synergy that happens after the events have taken place: 'This is not about two people sat either side of you at a dinner table, or just swapping business cards. It is about meeting people you have an affinity with, who inspire you and who you can carry on the conversation with tomorrow, next week and for months to come.'

The focus for the first The Fix event was on the opportunities presented by pop-ups and how organisations - from fledgling startups to large brands - could potentially benefit from embracing this concept. It was curated by We Are Pop Up, an online platform for the exchange of commercial property on short-term leases. Nick Russell, its co-founder, said: 'Eighteen months ago we saw that there were a lot of pop-up events happening, but we also saw a lot of vacant space. When we looked at that more closely we found that the transaction costs were too high, even though the climate was right for people to be making new ideas with help from creative project-funding initiatives such as Kickstarter.

'None of us were involved in the property market but we thought we could try to fix something there.'

Russell says that We Are Pop Up is really about communication and connections. It enables pop-ups to list their project and apply for available spaces. 'We remove so much friction from that process. We take the "discovery period" for finding a site down from eight weeks - which is often longer than most pop-ups want to exist - and turning it into something that can happen almost instantly,' he says.

Fix

The importance of connections and the synergy they can create is often underestimated, says Russell. 'For every great thing that we do, there is a whole network of things that we do before that to make it possible.'

For The Fix, We Are Pop Up came up with a Russian doll theme, to reflect the idea of 'pop-ups inside of pop-ups inside of pop-ups'. It was demonstrated on the night with a number of pop-up brands exhibiting their products and business concept to The Fix's guests, all presented within the environment of The Dolls House, itself a pop-up venue.

Russell says that fashion makes up 60 per cent of the pop-up requests on the We Are Pop Up website. Two of the exhibiting brands taking part in The Fix event fitted that description, yet have developed their businesses in virtually opposite ways. Women's fashion store Wandering Minds began life as an online venture and then took out a lease at the Boxpark pop-up location in London's Shoreditch to expand. Conversely, BBS Clothing created the business case for launching its website by testing the water with pop-ups first.

In both cases, the pop-up shop has had a fundamental role to play in the launch phase and subsequent growth of these two brands.

One glaring question stands out in all this, however. Given the clear potential benefits, why aren't there more pop-up initiatives all over the country? There are, after all, thousands of empty commercial properties in the UK. According to figures from the Local Data Company, in terms of retail spaces alone the number of empty shops in the key 650 town centres in the country stands at 22,339 - the equivalent of 23 Sheffield city centres.

So for landlords stuck with empty properties, what's in it for them? Well increasingly, property owners and their agents are recognising that a creatively used space is better at enticing prospective long-term tenants than an hoarding. It showcases the space and the ways in which it could be used, and in pure bottom-line terms it allows at least some (albeit reduced) income from the property while waiting for a more permanent solution.

The same principles apply to shopping centres as much as to individual landlords. Pop-ups in centres can avoid unsightly empty units, add to the 'buzz' of a location and also enhance the centre's brand and its reputation for innovation.

Fix

Despite all of these benefits, We Are Pop Up's Russell admits that property remains the most difficult part of the equation to solve. 'We have 1,500 pop-ups and we can't place them all. We've managed to place about 15 per cent of the demand on our site, so clearly property is the big problem that needs to be solved.'

With the right vision and collaboration, much of the vacant commercial property in the UK could be transformed into something that is mutually beneficial for entrepreneur and landlord. Adam Towner, co-owner of The Dead Dolls Club which runs The Dolls House venue, initially had a plan for a derelict location on Kingsland Road in East London. When it fell through, he looked for alternative locations and discovered the empty building sited on trendy Hoxton Square that has now become a prime location events venue - albeit a temporary one given the long-term redevelopment plans for the site. Tollit said of The Dolls House: 'It's here now, possibly gone tomorrow sadly, but the important thing is that it's here and happening now and that's the key thing.'

But what of the wider future for pop-ups? Is this a product of circumstance, of the specific economic and societal conditions that we find ourselves in right now? Russell says: 'Is this something for bad times? Is it a flash in the pan? We don't see it that way, because we're starting to see this as "pop-up culture" - new ideas in new spaces. It's about minimising risk, it's about innovation, and ultimately about fostering a different type of engagement.'

Living Dolls

After deciding that their normal full-time jobs were not for them, Adam Towner and his wife Katy Grey Rosewarne took the plunge to quit and take on something altogether more creatively inspiring. Deciding to use their fashion and textile-design backgrounds to make products, including tables, furniture and lights they soon found they couldn't fit everything in their house, so they found a derelict shop near their home which they were able to rent cheaply. They subsequently rented out the two studio spaces at the rear of the shop that helped them cover the costs, freeing them up to focus solely on making and creating.

Living Dolls

Several temporary locations later, their concept for a flexible pop-up events venue is now enjoying success in Hoxton Square, East London. 'An estate agent put us in touch with the landlord who owns this place, and he has been amazing,' says Towner. 'It was originally due to be knocked down in February this year but due to planning delays with the proposed development on this site, we have extended our stay until later in the year.'

Everything within The Dolls House has been made by Towner and Grey Rosewarne, including furniture, artwork and light fittings, some of them clever reworkings of the existing fixtures from the property's days as an art gallery.

The space was a blank canvas, but full of potential, when they took over. 'We took down the walls that had been blocking the windows, and opened up this amazing space. It's a £10m building that we would never be able to otherwise afford had we not spoken to the landlord and explained what we wanted to do with the space,' says Towner.

Now, with expansion of the space into the neighbouring property, The Dolls House is set to get become a fully licensed, fully functioning event space. 'This was done with virtually no money. Our budget for getting it to this stage has been just £12,500, having done all the work ourselves.'

Living Dolls

But this isn't without sacrifice. The couple signed for the property on a Friday, got married on the Saturday and then on the Monday started work on the property, spending the first three weeks of their married life getting the space up to scratch.

'We've turned it into something that we really wanted it to be. For anyone else thinking of creating any kind of pop-up, they just need to think about the person walking through the door. You can't just have good food but terrible decor, you have to have the full package these days and customers have the right to expect that. Sometimes pop-up restaurants can be more expensive than permanent ones that have been around for years. They have to be good - you can't take the mick.

'The fact is, though, it can be done. There are other spaces like this out there waiting to be found and turned into something special.'

The Dead Dolls Club
thedeaddollsclub.com

Thinking outside of the box

Thinking outside of the box

Opened in 2011 by founder and CEO Roger Wade, BOXPARK in Shoreditch, East London, is scheduled to remain open for business in this trendy part of London until at least 2015. This pop-up shopping centre is constructed of stripped and refitted shipping containers, creating unique, low-cost, popup stores.

Thinking outside of the box

Filled with a mix of fashion and lifestyle brands, galleries, cafés and restaurants, BOXPARK places local and global brands side by side, creating a unique shopping and dining destination. Traders are given a choice of flexible terms, ranging from a short three-month lease to longer fixed terms or turnover-linked options.

BOXPARK
boxpark.co.uk








Progressive Media International Limited. Registered Office: 40-42 Hatton Garden, London, EC1N 8EB, UK.Copyright 2024, All rights reserved.