How a Novelty Merchandising Affair Turned into a Serious Profit Builder
by Sam Adebisi
Most popular music artists with dedicated and burgeoning fans utilize pop-up shops through collaboration with fashion brands as a required income builder in today’s creative economy. Doing this for an artist’s brand cultivates their awareness, intimacy to their fans, and makes people feel privileged to buy limited edition items such as clothing that won’t ever be on sale again.
Pop-up shops or stores are when a brand holds an event at a trendy and hip locale within an area to offload specially created items, for a specific event which creates an immersive fan experience that fans are able to cherish. As fans may not always be able to go to their favourite musician’s concert, they can then instead purchase merchandise from the artist literally buying into the brand.
The earliest use of the term pop-up shop and pop-up retail occurred online in 2004 according to Trendwatching.com. In their genesis a myriad of pop-up shops offered a spectrum of unexpected items ranging from yogurt to cat food. However, in recent times the proliferation and success of pop-up shops converging the worlds of fashion and music has become a new way for music artists to attract old and new fans to their brand. Culminating into the business of pop-up shops becoming a $10-billion-dollar-business, according to a report from Real Touch Points.
The nature of pop-up shops is a very secretive affair as fans are unsure how merchandising might look like giving pop-up shops an exclusive feel which is a direct antithesis to the very open and fast paced social media culture we currently live in. Thus, fans are essentially purchasing a one of one collectors’ item that will act as a time capsule towards a brand in this artist’s history.
Artist brands with high social equity can sell things such as limited clothing, novelty items such as keychains or even the hip new trend being the zine ; which is short form for magazine. This is true as Frank Ocean’s recent pop-up shops for the release of his latest album, Blond served as his first project in four years and the eagerness of his fans at his pop-ups led to the Blond zine titled, Boys Don’t Cry which was free at his pop-ups being resold on sites like Ebay for upwards of $1000 dollars.
Images courtesy of Billboard.com, HypeBeast, & Idolator.
Pop-up shops have recently gained even more traction in the media recently with the pop-ups of numerous musical artists, but distinctly the immense success of two artists in particular, Justin Bieber and Kanye West. The clothing for Bieber’s current ongoing pop-up is made in collaboration by esteemed streetwear designer Jerry Lorenzo for Bieber’s current album, Purpose, accompanying his Purpose tour. Lorenzo helms his own popular streetwear label called Fear of God, known for its nocturnal feeling and oversized clothing pieces. This converged with Bieber’s notoriety has led to Purpose merchandise such as sweaters going for a few hundred dollars.
(From Left to Right) Recording Artist, Justin Bieber and streetwear designer, Jerry Lorenzo.
Image courtesy of Rolling Stone Magazine.
For Kanye West’s recent album, The Life of Pablo, and its recently cancelled accompanying tour, The Saint Pablo Tour, he would hold pop-up shops in trendy retail spaces where he would venture to on tour. The clothing pieces were made in collaboration with Gildan, a manufacturer known for making cheap priced clothing ranging anywhere from 10-30 dollars. This left a bad taste in some fans’ mouths as The Life of Pablo pop-ups sold clothing from the same manufacturer anywhere from five to forty times the markup due to West’s star power.
Image courtesy of Vogue.
Working on this piece I was able to rendezvous by mere circumstance with two individuals on Ryerson campus, Jayden and Kwaku. They were wearing The Life of Pablo sweaters, items they were able to purchase at Kanye West’s pop-up shop in Toronto when he came in late August to perform his Saint Pablo Tour.
They both detailed to me as massive fans of Kanye West how much he meant to them as not only a musician but as a creative. Especially considering his current aspirations in fashion with his revolutionary pop-up shops and his YEEZY fashion line with Adidas as young creatives themselves,
“I bought Kanye’s sweater that had Toronto with the Gothic font plastered on the front for $135. I got a hat as well that had this for $50” as Jayden relayed to me. He spoke highly of the experience with effervescent euphoria which was immediately present to me, “Honestly even though we went to his concert after I was more excited about buying Kanye’s gear, it felt like I was buying into the whole Kanye experience” which Jayden said happily. “I loved his concert but having this sweater here I’m wearing knowing it is very limited as an item makes it more special to me than the concert. I just wish I could have bought his camouflage jackets which were over $400”, as he said with glee”, which Kwaku said with pride.
Image courtesy of Billboard.com.
This retail opportunity has become a standard staple of a musician’s album rollout towards fan interaction with the current global nature of pop-ups. The Weeknd with the release of his latest album, Starboy and his brand collaborating with merchandising brand, Bravado, for the limited clothing apparel.
Image courtesy of Billboard.com.
Pop-ups are here to stay for the foreseeable as they are an exact reflection of the see now buy now culture currently ongoing in fashion. We at HYPE recommend to our young readers to begin paying attention to their favourite artists to see if they will have pop-ups to purchase their own collection to keep or resell for disposable income during the school year, which people would be willing to pay for as seen with Frank Ocean’s, Boys Don’t Cry zine.
Top image of Justin Bieber Purpose Pop-up courtesy of Made by Pavlo.com.
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