Photo by Jay Paul
Pop-up shops have been part of Ledbury's business blueprint since the luxury menswear brand opened in December 2009, but until now, most of the shopping installations have lasted less than a week.
"It's been a really good way just to interact and connect with customers," says co-founder Paul Trible.
This month, the haberdashery hopes to build on the success of the short-term shopping events with the opening of its first extended pop-up at Stony Point Fashion Park. The brick-and-mortar experiment will kick off with a launch party on Aug. 30 and run until Sept. 30. (Ledbury also opened a 2,500-square-foot showroom in March on South 14th Street, but about 98 percent of sales continue to come from its website. )
"The idea with a Stony Point pop-up is to start testing our brick-and-mortar strategy," says Elisabeth Edelman, marketing director.
The temporary shop will inhabit 700 square feet of the 3,000-square-foot space formerly occupied by The Children's Place.
"The idea is to keep it clean and minimal," Trible says of the shop's white floors and sparse décor. Order Design Co., the masterminds behind Ledbury's newly minted downtown storefront, also designed the Stony Point shop. Richmond's Metro Modern antiques shop will provide furniture, and Trible plans to project black-and-white movies on the wall behind the sales counter, but "we're going to let the shirts do the talking in terms of color," he says.
After disassembling the Stony Point shop at the end of the month, Ledbury will hold a his-and-hers shopping weekend with Carytown boutique Pink in October and another extended holiday pop-up shop in Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown district from mid-November through December.
