Marketplace For Pop-Up Retail Expands To New York
A British, Airbnb-like marketplace, matching empty retail buildings with pop-up stores looking for short-term leases, has expanded to New York City.
Appear Here announced the opening of its New York office on Wednesday, jumping into a retail market ripe with vacant spaces in recent years, Crain's New York reports.
The London-based company is partnering with heavy-hitting landlords such as Blackstone Group, Brookfield Properties, Simon Property Group and Thor Equities to provide short-term tenants with spaces in 200 retail locations across Manhattan and Brooklyn, the Commercial Observer reports.
Spaces on the Appear Here exchange website represent a variety of price points, from 100 SF inside the new Wolf & Badger in SoHo for $2K/week to a Greene Street industrial corner space in SoHo for $21K/week.
Five years ago, Appear Here CEO Ross Bailey started his business by accident, opening a pop-up shop to sell knockoff memorabilia celebrating the Queen's diamond jubilee. He got calls from both Buckingham Palace telling him to shut down and from Under Armour asking if he could create the global sports brand a pop-up shop for the London Olympics.
Since then, 80,000 retail brands have worked with the company, including Nike, Spotify and Google. Its international expansion is backed by $9.4M in venture capital money, according to Crain's.
