Mine & Yours' Robson Street Popup Location "Pops Down" 

Mine & Yours Owners Jigme Love and Courtney Watkins at their Robson Street Popup Shop. (Photo  credit: Kayla Isomura www.kaylaisomura.com)

The great experiment of having a small, independently-owned boutique "pop up" on Western Canada's priciest retail street was for all intents and purposes, a tremendous success.

Mine & Yours, Vancouver's premier luxury and designer 2nd-hand consignment store, negotiated a favourable short-term lease to "pop up" on Robson Street for December 2014 and January 2015, perfectly timed to take advantage of the retail thoroughfare's high holiday and sale pedestrian shopping traffic.

Photo credit: Kayla Isomura (www.kaylaisomura.com)

A "popup" shop is a temporary retail store that can last anywhere from a day to six months. The pop-up model is a great way for retailers to boost sales, capture new markets, and to expose their product a wider audience.  For landlords, they are a great way to inject life, and drive traffic to an otherwise vacant retail space, and of course, to collect rent during the interim vacancy periods between long term tenancies, which can take many months to negotiate.

Photo credits: Kayla Isomura (www.kaylaisomura.com)

"Robson Street was a fantastic experience," said Mine & Yours Founder Jigme Love. "Serving customers alongside retail giants like Aritzia, Banana Republic, Forever 21, and Sephora was titillating in and of itself - but more importantly, we vastly increased our sales (by 700%) and grew our customer and supplier base. Now Robson Street shoppers, who may have not formerly considered shopping pre-owned, are embracing our buy-sell-trade business model, and flocking to our flagship Hornby location (1062 Hornby Street)."

Mine & Yours sells pre-owned designer and luxury clothing and accessories like Louis Vutiton luggage and handbags. Photo Credit: Kayla Isomura (www.kaylaisomura.com)

Courtney Watkins, Partner at Mine & Yours, says, "Pop-ups are our strategy for expanding into new markets while we maintain our flagship presence and grow our online presence. We have pop-ups planned for other locations in Vancouver, Los Angeles, and Toronoto this year." 

Photo Credit: Kayla Isomura (www.kaylaisomura.com)