Fashion Mingle’s webinar on moving retail experiences online @fashionmingle @pop_up_mob #webinar #fashion #covid19 #coronavirus

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Fashion Mingle, helmed by Melissa Shea, held another Mingle Mastermind Group webinar on Friday to talk about the need to move in person retail experiences online, the session’s special guest was Ana Pelucarte, founder of the PopUp Mob who works with brands to create a pop up store.

The idea behind PopUp Mob is creating a temporary physical mini-store at a desired location for a brand who wants to maximize their exposure, doing it for whatever length of time, and/ or whatever size of space and staff the brands want to have, depending on their budget, and how serious the brand is about boosting their sales revenue.

What Ana sees out of brands is they’re planning for when things truly get back to normal while having a virtual option to keep an open mind on, the problem with absolute true normal is no one knows when it’ll come back, or if they’ll be a second wave of COVID19 cases and quarantine in the not-too-distant future, so Ana recommends that brands go virtual, put all their time, energy, and passion into embracing the new normal of working online, choosing between AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) to create an entirely new brand experience for the brand’s consumer base who can be engaged on their smartphones.

For the amount of money a brand spends for PopUp Mob to build a pop up store, that same amount of money can be used to go virtual, because it’s not just all about building the pop up store for the base to shop, time must be spent on coding and marketing.

Ana’s goal for brands right now in COVID19 is embracing the new normal, but more so pivoting between physical and virtual, being ready to withstand a second wave of COVID19 with all the fixings, without interrupting sales, losing customers, or stopping business.

But whether you’re physical, virtual, or both, you need to have all your team members involved in pop up projects on the same page, that’s why you need to have your legal obligations in order, and you cannot be serious about any project unless you have a lawyer, something that legal expert, Shirin Movahed, could not stress enough when chiming in with legal advice.

Another key thing Ana mentioned about pop ups are that if you bring a pop up brand to cities like Chicago, Nashville, Miami, so forth, and not place like New York or Los Angeles who are use to pop ups, those cities who don’t see pop ups all the time will definitely be drawn to the physical experience, as well as the virtual experience when needed.

Pop up in either capacity can be done for the masses, with a handful of brands together, and/ or invite only, but pivoting between physical and virtual in the era of COVID19 is a must.

Daniel Quintanilla