Pop-up retail – from mini kiosks to micro stores – can anyone go smaller?

You may remember our recent blog post about the pop-up retail mini kiosks installed by Coca-cola to promote their new range of mini cans,  complete with other miniature goods  and vending machines which were promoted on the streets of five of Germany’s busiest cities. Well now  Tokyo-based British designer Duncan Shotton has taken it the idea of miniature pop-up retail a step further with what he is claiming is the world’s smallest pop-up shop – and it’s remote controlled too!

Shotton claims the design could provide a  novel solution to the problem of limited space in Tokyo’s busy retail areas with his 8 inch high shop on wheels. The shop is built on the remains of a remote-controlled car and can whizz amongst the shoppers on the street, whilst also catching their eye and taking the goods to them rather than vice-versa.

The designer created the store to promote his range of tiny Pinocchio figure push pins which are arranged on a cork board inside the tiny shop. The pins are in a limited edition of 1000 and after selling 900 Shotton put his thinking cap on to come up with an innovative way of shifting the last 100 pins – and so the shop was born!

As with the Coca Cola mini stores, the motivation behind the idea is to publicise the designer and his products as much as it is to sell them – especially as the tiny shop can only carry one product at a time! This isn’t the designer’s first foray into pop-up retail. His previous works include a pop-up store in a tree – also in Tokyo – last year and he claims that the aim behind the novel designs is to “create products that engage users emotionally, promote happiness and ensure people love what they are doing, wherever they are and whoever they’re there with.”