What I Have Learnt Having My First Pop Up Shop? #Blogmas2022

This blog post is a little raw for me because I feel like a failure and I am being completely honest with you about how my first pop up shop. Now I did a blog post called What I Have Learnt Standing At My First Artisan Market? so I took some advice from that but here is what I learnt from my pop up shop?

In Harrogate there is a pop up shop, an actual brick and mortar where each week it is somebody new every Monday and I really wanted to do a pop up so signed up for the pop up shop during the week of the Christmas Market.

Pre-view the shop and plan: I had been in the shop a few times and drawn up the shop but it was from memory and it wasn't the best, when I had my stock in there, it was empty and I filled the shop with crap, not crap, I had my friend's business House of Halle in there as well as a friends charity cat nip mice but what I did was got all of my sisters clothing that she is trying to sell and that filled the shop. The shop was confusing, I got asked if it was a charity shop, I got asked if it is a school project, it was just disorganised. Also the shop is quite big and there is no heating, I had the door shut quite a lot and I think that wasn't very inviting so if I was to do it again I would have more heaters around, I didn't realise there wasn't heating so only had the one small heater behind the counter.

People will try and barter: I didn't expect this but people will try and barter, now I know times are tough but I think because of the clothing situation with the store people thought they could barter with my candles.

Brand the place more: I had my banner on one wall but the place wasn't branded, I need people to remember the name Maude & Noah. I think maybe window vinyls and banners.

Make it simpler: Setting up took longer than I wanted, I need to be more organised and more simple, everything seemed a little messy.

Don't rely on things and people: I honestly thought that because I had the store during Harrogate Christmas Market I thought there would be loads more sales but Monday to Thursday even the market was really slow. I didn't get the foot fall I wanted and some days the sales were laughable. I also expected friends (Northern friends) to come down but people have their own lives and Christmas time is really busy. I do want to thank Jess P and Charlie-Anne as well as Katie and her friend.