brighton etsy pop up - behind the scenes

I'm sure you have seen or heard by now that we ran a Brighton Etsy Pop Up Shop in Brighton this winter, oh and that I'm the Captain of the Brighton Etsy Team.

You will have seen photos like this

of the finished shop and all the items in it but you probably won't have seen much about what went on behind the scenes!

So that's what I'm here to tell you, well some of it anyway...

6 months to go...
We started planning the Pop Up back in April, yup really. Cheska (Mooshpie) and I attended a We Are Pop Up meeting (along with a few other familiar #btnetsy faces) and then Cheska set us up on the website as seeking space.

3 months to go...
In August we asked members of the Brighton Etsy Team to apply to be part of the Pop Up and we whittled the list of over 60 down to just 25 with the help of Claire and Amy at Super + Super.

Alongside the Team Leaders, (Toby, Ali and Jam, Vicky, Claire and Ellen) we asked for others to help form the Pop Up Committee. Some awesome people came to our attention including Tori (Jasmine and Hobbes), Claire (In the Making), Elizabeth (ean jewellery) and Dario and Bea (Sebastian Bolivar)

2 months to go...
We applied for a bursary from Etsy to help towards the costs, which we were awarded after creating a budget of everything we were going to need including, rent, business rates, paint, the whole shop fit, vinyls for the window, insurance and more!

1 month to go...
The hunt was on for a space and as we approached our deadline, the 1st November, with no venue. I started to panic.

Claire had a plan for the decor, the branding by hello DODO, was done, Vicky had sorted the insurance, bank account, and set up the accounting system, we had all of the participants and we were poised and ready to go social media crazy!

1 week to go....
We called every landlord and agency in Brighton, with the help of Abi from We Are Pop Up, and walked all of Brighton to find empty properties. In the end we realised we couldn't afford anything except the space subsidised by the council in the South Lanes and the help of We Are Pop Up we secured 16 Brighton Square.

Our shop - as you can see it used to be a Dog Cafe so it didn't smell too pleasant when we moved in!

Claire measuring up so that she could  design the shop fit!

Toby in our Pop Up space before the project (nightmare) began!

What it looked like before we started plus our delivery from IKEA! We had to clean for an entire day, the back room was full of maggots (YUK) that Claire M and I fought off. We had to wash the floors and the walls several times, and after painting the walls and the ceiling white, we all smelt like dog...

Masking and Painting the trees. Marking out and masking took nearly a whole day, and then the painting took Claire and I another day to complete!

Team 2, we split the Pop Up Committee between Saturday and Sunday to get all of the cleaning and painting done.

Some of the furniture from Retro Station in place, and the trees which Jacques laser cut, oh and the awesome cash desk/display unit that was gifted to us from ink_d Galley!

Putting up the card shelves, I think we had been there nearly 13 hours straight at this point, hence the beers and grumpy faces. We were also asked not to drill about 10 minutes after we had started drilling which wasn't a good start

- 1 week to go...

One week from the committee of 13, my family and baby Ezra helping plus an awesome design by Claire Knill, meant we opened on the 6th November with our soft launch and private view.

Don't underestimate how long it takes to unpack 25 designers work, price it and display it, this took us nearly 2 whole days with four of us doing it! Also we all spent the whole 7 days which we rented the space before we opened to pop in and do the different jobs! It's a long hard slog opening a Pop Up shop!

The private view was packed and we hadn't even invited any press! We celebrated and continued to prepare for the big press launch on Saturday...

Want to see all of this in a time lapse by Bettina Nem?

Yeah so that's all I'm telling you this week, if you enjoyed hearing behind the scenes let me know in the comments and I'll finish off next week, if you didn't then I won't! There is quite a bit missing from this and I'm not sure if I have really conveyed how much work it is to open a Pop Up shop, but hopefully you get the idea! Did you come and visit our shop? Let us know in the comments!

ROAR!

Karli