One of the Deep Cove brothers behind Herschel Supply Co. won’t say how a lemonade stand used to promote their new pop-up shop landed on top of Quarry Rock.
“It’s a trade secret. But, I can tell you that we did have a couple volunteer firemen involved,” says Lyndon Cormack in an email to the North Shore News.
The new pop-up is positioned smack in the middle of Deep Cove’s main drag, Gallant Avenue, and right in the height of tourist season. It’s a refreshing marketing strategy, by all accounts.
“Response has been great,” says Cormack. “There’s no better time for lemonade than in the summer, and Deep Cove with its global audience is an interesting market to be able to have a consumer activation.”
Pop-ups, or temporary retail locations, have historically tended to conform to few core tenets.
The main guiding principle is almost always to primarily focus on the retailer’s own products as a way to stimulate sales.
Most pop-up stores, in fact, resemble miniaturized versions of what that brand’s permanent stores would look like.
That’s not the case for East Vancouver-headquartered Herschel Supply Co., which is standing the traditional concept of a pop-up store on its head.
Herschel makes backpacks and accessories and sells them via e-commerce or through a network of wholesalers and third-party distributors.
Its latest pop-up store primarily sells a product that is about as far removed from backpacks as possible – lemonade.
“We wanted to be able to open up and put a Herschel brand filter on a category that is so far not associated with our brand whatsoever,” Cormack told Business in Vancouver July 4. “Lemonade is potentially the farthest we could go to the opposite side.”
Herschel has backpacks and tote bags displayed on one of the Deep Cove store’s colourful walls.
The rest of the store is designed to promote lemonade – complete with a lemon-themed chandelier and a giant lemon motif on a far wall.
One retail analyst applauds the move.
“Harmony can be created when two unrelated things are paired together, provided one of them isn’t negative,” said Retail Insider Media owner Craig Patterson.
“Lemonade generally has a positive image – sweet and refreshing, so pairing it with backpacks might be a smart move, especially with the messaging that there’s a hiking trail near the pop-up.”
The pop-up shop’s lemonade comes in different flavours, with each being colour coded. The backpacks reflect that same colour pattern.
Herschel partnered with Vancouver’s The Juice Truck to provide the lemonade and with the charity ArtStarts to be the beneficiary of all the profit. ArtStarts works to expand the role of arts education in B.C. elementary and secondary schools.
The pop-up opened July 1 and officially launched on July 7. Cormack said that it would operate until mid-September, when Herschel will close the store and revamp the space with a different, yet-to-be-disclosed pop-up theme intended to run until the end of the year.
Asked if there are long-term plans to have a store in Deep Cove, Cormack says the waterfront enclave is where Herschel likes to have fun with the brand.
“We have a presence in a store called A’hoy in Deep Cove, but at the moment there’s no plans to have an official Herschel store.
Mind you, when the opportunity arises to do fun activations with the brand we love the Deep Cove backdrop, as both Jamie (Cormack) and I call it our home,” he says.
Having Herschel product placement in movies and TV shows is another creative marketing vehicle for the company.
A webpage dedicated to identifying backpacks on screen lists Herschel as being spotted in 13 Reasons Why and Jurassic World.
But that strategy doesn’t necessarily translate into a sales uptick for Herschel after a movie release.
“We’re approached quite frequently to have our product placed in films and TV, and we work with them on making that happen,” says Cormack. “We’ve never seen the sales necessarily skyrocket from one thing. It happens occasionally, like in 2011 when we were just getting started and Oprah included the Little America in her Favorite Things list.”
When not dreaming up innovative ideas for pop-up stores, Cormack is overseeing his 170-employee company that designs products in Vancouver, manufactures them off-shore and wholesales them to be sold in thousands of locations worldwide.
Herschel is also fine-tuning its first corporately owned retail store, which it intends to open at 347 and 349 Water Street on March 1, assuming that the permitting process with the city goes as planned.
That permanent, 5,000-square-foot location will be the largest Herschel-branded location in the world.
The company currently has about 45 stores that are branded Herschel but all are run by third-parties and are not corporately owned.
Herschel has already established itself in 72 countries worldwide, recently making inroads in Asia.
“The most exciting opportunity that we have in front of us is our newly opened office in Shanghai and our expansion into the Chinese market,” says Cormack.
Closer to home, it’s no secret Herschel backpacks are popular with students. With back-to-school shopping around the corner, Cormack teases, new Herschel product will bring added functionality to the fashionable bags.
“We’ve continued to expand our backpack line for fall with a bunch of new colourways and beautiful prints,” says Cormack.
With files from BIV reporter Glen Korstrom. Business in Vancouver is published by Glacier Media, parent company of the North Shore News.
