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Shop local, shop small

We are urged to ‘shop local’ and ‘shop small’, but how do we find local designer-makers, artists and creatives that we want to buy from? We explore the outcomes of a recent participatory research project focusing on equipping artists, designer-makers and creatives with the retail skills necessary to become more visible.

8 February 2024

Participatory research involves researchers and community participants working together to understand a problem of mutual interest. This strengthens research outcomes by recognising the experience, needs and preferences of the participants from outside academia, giving them greater agency to implement research findings.

Pop-ups for small, local businesses

In a recent collaboration with North East England small business owners, Corinne Lewis-Ward and Ann English, we ran a participatory research project to investigate how local artists, designer-makers and creatives can be more visible to consumers through the use of pop-up shops.

A pop-up is defined as “a temporary shop, stall or brand experience used to sell goodsand services for a limited period of time.”(1)

Corinne is a designer herself and wanted to understand how pop-up initiatives could be used more effectively by small, creative businesses. Ann is a specialist in pop-up training, and together they approached Newcastle University Business School to develop the idea for the Pop-up Primer Programme.

An illustration of a stylish pop-up boutique. A woman wearing a leopard print coat examines clothes on a rail, while a woman in red tartan trousers and a green top looks at accessories on shelves.

A robust pop-up model

Through this collaboration, we conducted participatory research to understand what a robust and innovative model of pop-up provision might look like. This included the following activities:

  • co-designing a survey to elicit the views of designer-makers, artists and creatives regarding pop-ups
  • designing and testing the Pop-up Primer Programme, comprising a series of skillbuilding workshops, with a cohort of designer-makers, artists and creatives
  • conducting consumer research regarding pop-ups and shopping local

During the first iterations of our Pop-up Primer Programme in 2022, the workshops were mainly held in the pop-up shop, Sook, in the Metrocentre, where we undertook some consumer research that found:

  • 95% of respondents agreed that pop-ups like this would make them more likely to visit the Metrocentre
  • 100% of respondents agreed that it felt good to buy from small, local businesses
  • 92.5% of respondents agreed that they liked to tell their friends and family that they bought from a local business

The next phase

Following the initial Pop-up Primer Programme, we secured funding from Creative Central, funded by the North of Tyne Combined Authority and Newcastle
City Council, to run a new, more in-depth programme called Commercialise without Compromise.

The programme workshops are delivered by local creatives and include a mix of the original workshops plus extra activities to help participants promote their products. The programme has been developed based on Corinne’s lived experience of being a creative and our consumer research which highlighted:

  • 62.5% of respondents wanted to know about the person they are buying from
  • 30% of respondents would have liked to have met the person they are buying from
  • 50% of respondents said they would buy a handcrafted product without being able to see the product ‘in real life’.
An illustration of a stylish pop-up boutique. One person is selecting clothes from a rack while the other, holding a bag, looks on.

However, only 63% of respondents said they knew how and where to buy from local creative businesses. The main goal of both our programmes is to provide skills to local artists, makers and creatives to get their products in front of consumers.

From our research, we know we are providing valuable skills for creatives and there is consumer demand for collective pop-ups featuring local creative businesses in prime retail locations. However, questions remain:

  • What is the business model? Is there a role for local authorities, centre owners, department stores?
  • How do you select, curate and vet businesses?
  • How do you deal with issues of control?
  • Is there a role for pop-up intermediaries?

Our research continues with a view to answering these questions and supporting the local creative community. We will be hosting a pop-up event at Grainger Market in Newcastle to enable further consumer research and showcase the talents of our participants.

 

1 16 Centre for Economic and Business Research (2014) Britain’s Pop-up retail economy 2014. London: CEBR.