Retail shop pops up at Swinburne's Wantirna campus
In Summary
With retail stores around Australia seeing a growing trend in pop-up stores, Swinburne’s Diploma of Visual Merchandising students have examined this trend head on, by designing and constructing a retail pop-up shop that showcases local designers and artists.
Using the skills they have learnt in their course, the students have transformed a classroom at the university’s Wantirna campus into a full-scale, operational pop-up shop that will be open for the general public to walk through this Wednesday 16 July.
“The visual merchandising industry has transformed over the last few years. We’ve see a large increase in the number of online and social media driven retail sales, which has meant that traditional bricks and mortar stores have had to improve their in-store visual merchandising to stay competitive,” Di Matthews, Swinburne Visual Merchandising teacher, said.
“Our Visual Merchandising course always aims to be adaptive to industry trends and also the future of the industry, which is why it is great for our students to gain experience in all areas of pop-up shop design and implementation.”
The pop-up shop has been created for client ‘OH GINGER’, which is a partnership between several local manufacturers of sustainable handmade products from the Melbourne region.
With the students monitoring customer’s activity and interaction with the pop-up shop as part of the project, people are encouraged to visit the space and find out more about the benefits of installing and using pop-up shops.
“We would love to see local businesses come down and find out more about how you can use these type of shops as a cost-effective way of merchandising your products,” Ms Matthews said.
The pop up shop is located at Swinburne’s Wantirna campus, 369 Stud Road Wantirna, and will be open for people to check out on Wednesday 16 July, 9am-2pm.
The Diploma of Visual Merchandising is an 18 month Vocational Education course which is offered at Swinburne’s Wantirna and Hawthorn campuses. The next intake for the course is in August. You can find out more about how to apply for the Diploma of Visual Merchandising here.