H&M will once again set up pop-up at Coachella

Dive Brief:

Swedish fast-fashion retailer H&M announced that it is again partnering with the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on a co-branded collection for men and women, launching in the U.S. next month.
The retailer will also again set up a pop-up at the two-weekend festival, famous for its boho-attired, free spirited attendees. Tickets are expensive and the event is sold out, but H&M has some passes to give out via social media in March.
Last year retailer REVOLVE offered same-day delivery of clothing to various spots at the festival and nearby areas, sending out vans to get morning orders out. The retailer also threw a party at the festival, and maintained a Coachella page online curating boho favorites Free People, For Love + Lemons, The Jet Set Diaries, and others.

Dive Insight:

The music festival season in general, and Coachella in particular, are increasingly influencing summer fashion trends. And retailers with the desired goods are savvy to tether themselves to a highly influential, sold-out mega-event like Coachella that continues to have that kind of sway with young people.

But it’s not just about having the goods, it’s also about making it easy for festival-goers to shop for them. Coachella’s capacity for each weekend is for 99,000 people, and this year it’s sold out already.

A gathering of that magnitude is a natural spot for a pop-up store with omni-channel capabilities, says Anthony Rodio, chairman of Storefront, which helps retailers find and establish pop-ups and other temporary leases. Retailers will increasingly find they need some flexibility when it comes to their physical footprint, rather than just the traditional capital-intensive, long term approach, he says.

“Consumers, especially when you get into fashion and lifestyle, they’re demanding a vertical, Apple-like experience,” Rodio told Retail Dive. “ I believe the old retail model’s going away. The world is over-stored in my opinion. Pop-ups enable you to meet your customers in a timely, seasonably driven, short term type of way.”