Event announcement: boxXshop

Date: Thursday November 28, 2013
Time: 6pm-9pm (Koopavond)
Place: Oostelijke Handelskade 34, Amsterdam

Fancy a quirky Xmas market with 100% handmade cute little gift?

boxXshop is a very special 180 minutes Christmas market on the Thursday Shopping Evening at Lloyd Hotel Amsterdam. During the event, Lloyd Hotel’s library will be transformed into 22 gift shops with limited edition handmade gifts for Sinterklaas and Christmas.

22 designers and makers will be selling their handmade goodies ranging from paper & print, jewelry, ceramics, crochet to yummy edible gifts presented in different box shops – after the event, all the boxes will be demolished and re-installed again as the library.

boxXshop is the place to be for you who fancy an alternative Christmas market, and who want to enjoying shopping in delightful Thursday evening in a cozy place. You can find us on Thursday November 28th at Lloyd Hotel. We will be there from 6-9pm…See you then!? Oh, and don’t forget to bring your cash!

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Below you will find more info and impressions from our past events in 2011 and 2012.
You can get an impression of boxXshop 2011 by this video or these photos.

installing the boxXshop

33 makers and designers will offer you diverse handmade gifts perfect for Sinterklaas & Xmas

You can check this post The day of boxXshop to see how boxXshop was built together in 2 hours.

boxXshop is built by these boxes, currently used as Lloyd Hotel library’s storage

*This year boxXshop is made possible by
Lloyd Hotel & Cultural Embassy, Nest Project and Eliane Roest.

boxXshop is calling for designers and makers!

Thank you for your interest! The registration is closed on October 31.

This year boxXshop will be launched again at Lloyd Hotel Amsterdam! Do you have unique handmade gifts for sale? Register a box today.

What is boxXshop?

A pop-up gift shop made of boxes.
Every box is a mini retail store (or a showroom).
Check this story to get some impressions: The day of boxXshop

When and where?

Saturday evening from 6pm-9pm, December 1, 2012 at Lloyd Hotel Amsterdam.

What can you sell?

1. Your own handmade arts & crafts & food…etc.
2. Delicate and affordable products under the price of 50 euro.
3. Unique gifts for the holiday season.
4. Objects that are no larger than the box: width 68 cm – length 35 cm – depth 37.5 cm

How does your boxXshop look like?

It is a multiplex-framed box: width 68 cm – length 35 cm – depth 37.5 cm

How to participate?

You can rent a box to become one of the boxXshop owner. Rent one box is 20 euro (price excl. btw).

This will include:
1. Shop space – beautiful multiplex-made box.
2. Publicity – you can expose your work at a great location.
3. PR – boxXshop was promoted by Etsy, Dutchhandmade, Lloyd Hotel & 101 woonideeen, strawberry earth and the participants last year…and this year we will again collaboratively promote the event.
4. Network – you will meet other designers and makers who share the same interests and experiences with you.

How about the insurance?

All the damages will be at the participants’ own risk.

How many boxes are available for rent?

There are 30 boxes available for rent.

How to participate?

Please send a email with your name, contact info and few pictures of your work to us. After reviewing your work, we will react to you and provide you further information.

How will boxXshop be constructed?

boxXshop will be assembled collaboratively by all the participants – yes, it is a great chance to meet other designers and makers who might become your future collaborators!

boxXshop is a collaboration between Lloyd hotel & cultural embassy and Nest Project. Join our event page and spread the CALL to your friends please 🙂

From a vacant restaurant to a pop-up ice cream bar

Isn’t it great if you can make a small business you’ve always wanted to make, without the big investors, long-term leases and designed interior? How about being a temporary owner of a vacant restaurant and testing your new business for 6 months?

Around the corner of our street, an entire building block is announced to be demolished. A Chinese restaurant has left a while ago, leaving a dark-, empty space. Few weeks ago, I noticed that something started to happen – the space has been cleaned; white paint has washed the wall. Soon after, a flyer arrived to announce the opening of the ice cream bar.

In just few weeks, the ice cream bar opened its door, transformed the vacant restaurant space and is now successfully seducing the curious crowd. So who is behind it and what has made this pop-up bar work?

‘I wanted to start my own business and happened to see this vacant space’, said Roos – the owner and the young entrepreneur of this temporary ice cream bar. ‘Nobody knows when this building block will be demolished, so I simply seize the chance to start up my business’.  As a temporary owner of the space, Roos had to appropriate the restaurant space in order to keep the investment low, and to furnish the space as soon as possible since there is only a temporary lease. This improvising character actually makes her space very inviting to the by-passers. People feel very comfortable to step in and to chat with Roos. ‘Yes, that’s also what I intend to create – to make people feel like home’.

source: http://www.stationroos.nl

Now you can easily get a ball of ice cream plus a cup of coffee together for less than 3 euro (these days, a cup of coffee in Amsterdam already costs you 3 euro). Customers start to improvise the service together with Roos. ‘Requests called in for kids birthday parties. So I’ve initiated workshops to make some crafts and ice cream together with the kids, for example‘.

While having an ice cream at Roos’ bar, I heard people chatting and fancying to see more this kind of temporary initiatives in Amsterdam. Temporary stores prove to attract attention which helps to draw potential future tenants, but still many storefronts in the city are left vacant. I wonder if there could be a new kind of match-make platform that helps starter entrepreneurs to nest in vacant properties (for example, popupsquare)? It should be a different one from the current retail property’s website: it should be able to match small-scale initiatives to urban niche spaces and to obtain the temporary permit [1] more easily.

According to Roos, it’s really difficult to acquire a commercial property to run a temporary bar / restaurant in Amsterdam. ‘I am really luck to have this chance. All the commercial properties are simply too expansive for starters‘, said Roos. I hope Roos could continue serving her cost-friendly ice cream and could benefit from this temporary initiative which might be the stepping stone for her future ice cream business [2].

[1] In Amsterdam, a temporary (pop-up) bar/or restaurant needs a temporary lease as well as a catering permit (in Dutch: horecavergunningen) which costs quite some bucks to obtain.
[2] Station Roos will stay at this location til January 2013, and will serve various food such as lunch and warm snacks in winter time. You can keep track with her activities at www.stationroos.nl

Related articles

• From one day big sale to pop-up shop (www.nestproject.nl)
• Pop-up! Creative use of urban niche spaces (www.nestproject.nl)

10 examples of Collaborative Store in Amsterdam

What is a Collaborative Store?
Imagine it’s like an online marketplace (e.g. etsy) translated into a bricks-and-mortar store. This is a perfect model for micro entrepreneurs – craftspeople, designers, independent musicians, inventors, food makers – who can collectively create the maximum visibility with just little investment.

Endossa is an interesting example in Sao Paulo which has defined their store as:

a shop where people choose what it sells. It´s a translation of many concepts behind web 2.0 into a bricks-and-mortar store. A platform where content (products) gets ranked and filtered by users (consumers).

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There are some basic strategies in running a Collaborative Store:

• Open marketplace: rather than selecting vendors, the store is available to almost every product. It’s a user-generated selection process meaning eventually unique and creative products will be endorsed by the customers.
• Micro-investment: usually a small amount of fee is charged without sales commission.
• Shops-within-a-shop: micro-retail-space such as shelf / boxes are made available for rent. In some other cases, a shop space is collaboratively run by multiple tenants.
• Temporary lease: leasing a shop space for a short period of time – for a day, a weekend or a month.
• Mixed Use: mixing different types of activities in one space – retailing, workshops, performance, food & beverage, beauty salon…etc.

Collaborative Store is not yet very common in Amsterdam and other cities in the Netherlands, but there is certainly a growing interest in this niche. Below I’ve sampled 10 initiatives in Amsterdam based on the above mentioned strategies. Hope this list will inspire more initiatives and help micro entrepreneurs to find start-up spaces and to collaborate.

1. The New Label Project (Rozengracht 75) is probably the first initiative in Amsterdam that realized the concept of Shelf (box) Rental Store. The shop space is carefully designed with different sizes of boxes which can be rented by various types designers & makers.

2. Open Shop Amsterdam (nieuwezijds voorburgwal 291) is a shop collaboratively run by several Dutch fashion designers. Since 2003, various Dutch starter designers have joined this initiative before they become independent.

3. One Day Shop (Haarlemmerdijk 41) offers an empty retail space where various retailers can rent for 1-3 days.

4. Mini Shopping center of cool (Amstel 180) is a mini retail store that offers various sizes of spaces and temporary rental possibilities.

5. Charlie & Mary (Gerard Doustraat 84) is a cafe-in-a-retail-shop collaboratively run by Beter & Leuk café and Charlie & Mary fashion store. Actually Beter & Leuk (Eerste Oosterparkstraat 91) has another café which also offers micro spaces for rent for design and crafts.

6. The Novel Swap Shop (Ernest Staesstraat 7) is a meeting place for free clothes-swap, coffee and cake. It is a part of the Bookstore project, a social initiative offering artists-in-residence with affordable living-working spaces. Want to launch an event here? Why not join their clothes-swap day, chat with the artists with free coffee and cake, and talk about future collaboration possibilities…

7. Depot BG (Tolstraat 137) is a project space initiated by several creative offices who are temporarily leasing the building of former city archives of Amsterdam. In the past, Depot BG has hosted various events including film, exhibition, pop-up dinner…and its door is always open for new ideas & collaborations.

8. Bar22 (Wolvenstraat 22-24) offers its space to host various events: for example, an online retailer ThinksILIKEThinkILOVE has launched an evening pop-up shop here, creating an interesting atmosphere of vintage shopping party.

9. One Day Shop HTNK (Wibautstraat 127) is an annual fashion event that offers a platform for designer labels, photographers, illustrators as well as accessories designers. The participants have been growing into more than 50 vendors for the last event. It takes place at Club Trouw, where music, food and fashion together create an exclusive fashion marketplace & party.

10. Ultra de la Rue (Oudekerksplein 30) is a fairly new initiative in Amsterdam’s Red Light District. A group of artists and designers are temporarily leasing the space, creating a mixed use space as gallery, café bar and store. The space is located at a fantastic central location with a little taste of history and eroticism. Why not grab a coffee chat and brainstorm collaborative events with Ultra de la Rue?

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Want to share more examples of Collaborative Store? Please feel free to leave a comment or pin your example at our Pinterest board of Collaborative Store.

Related articles

• Strategies for Tough Times: Focus on the Micro-Entrepreneur

• How Small Shops Economize by Sharing Space

Hotel the Exchange – Amsterdam’s new creative nest

Left side is the OPTIONS! design store from Hotel the Exchange.

Lloyd hotel’s second endeavor, Hotel the Exchange, has recently opened its door in the center of Amsterdam. It’s literally located in the center that is notorious for its touristic café, snack bars, restaurants and souvenir shops. Many locals tend to avoid this hasty & noisy tourists’ spot, though it does have very special charm of quirkiness. Besides those low-profile hotels, there are many hidden surprises such as rooftop sauna, introverted restaurants (without street entrance) and many abandoned-, vacant- upper floor spaces waiting for the future to come.

In the past, there have been many attempts trying to intervene this area or to activate these vacant floors, but the long-term procedure (resulted from the urban legislation, the monumental law and etc.) has discouraged many initiatives. So how did Lloyd Hotel make Hotel the Exchange happen within half an year?

The first Lloyd Hotel is transformed from a former emigrant hotel, successfully creating a new cultural spot by mixing a design hotel with event spaces. Then Lloyd has launched a temporary hotel in Tokyo – Llove Hotel. After these challenges, Lloyd Hotel’s next ambition is to be the cultural catalyst for not only a marginal neighborhood and abroad, but also for the center of Amsterdam. So they acquired the second property without any hesitation when those 3 buildings on Damrak became available.

A snapshot from google map showing the former Damrak hotel and the building front were covered by signs and winter gardens.

The facade of the 3 buildings are refreshed by Hotel the Exchange, with higher ground floor spaces.

It seems impossible to connect 3 historical buildings into one (which is in conflict with the monumental law), but the possibility has been quitely created by the history. First of all, these 3 different-looking buildings, have actually already been connected by the former owner to create 2 hotels. This explains why Hotel the Exchange could be undertaken within a rather short period of time – without going through the process of negotiating with the monumental law and of changing the destination of use (e.g. from ‘housing’ to ‘hotel’). Another possibility created by the history is the entrance hallway – a ‘shaft of light’ that allows daylight to fall into this narrow corridor next to a snack bar. Tracing back to the historical drawings, it has been found out that there used to be an alleyway in the 17th century, which has been ‘swallowed’ by the building later. So eventually the city is happy to see the alleyway brought back by Hotel the Exchange.

Entrance is next to a snack bar.

In the light shaft looking towards the entrance - this was used to be an alleyway before.

Hotel the Exchange has created 61 rooms, café STOCK and one design store OPTIONS! all within 3 small building blocks. The arrangement of the rooms were mostly adapted from the 2 former hotels, though the interior has become more ‘porous’ by removing some rooms and creating internal windows. Other than most of the low-budget hotels that tend to block the views towards outside, Hotel the Exchange has revealed the views to Damrak as well as to the inner courtyard. Both views exposed more chaos rather than romance of the city, but have allowed spectators to reality-check the center of Amsterdam, which has been decaying and is now asking for more attentions and creative solutions to re-generate.

Hotel the Exchange has brought back the double height ground floor space in order to create Stock café.

Inside the OPTIONS! design store.

So will Hotel the Exchange be the catalyst for change for Amsterdam’s center? And how? It is clear that they are spreading slowly the spider web in this area…we will not have to wait for too long to hear Lloyd’s next surprises!

image courtesy Hotel the Exchange

In the light shaft looking towards the entrance – this was used to be an alleyway before.

Stock café

image courtesy Hotel the Exchange

image courtesy Hotel the Exchange

Inside the OPTIONS! design store.

From OPTIONS! looking towards STOCK café.

Entrance of OPTIONS!

Entrance is next to a snack bar.

A snapshot from google map showing the former Damrak hotel and the building front were covered by signs and

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I’ve like to thank Lloyd Hotel who shared their experiences and offered me a great guided tour through their buildings. Above story is based on the interview with Suzanne Oxenaar, who together with Otto Nan have initiated Lloyd Hotel, Llove Hotel & Hotel the Exchange.

Related articles

• At Amsterdam hotel, rooms are ‘dressed’ like fashion models (springwise.com)

Pop-up! Temporary use of niche spaces

In the last post Pop-up! Creative use of niche spaces #2 I have shared some cases of shared storefronts, collaborative shops and temporary use spotted in Taiwan. Those urban happenings are interesting though often motivated by short term profits. Here I’d like to share some international cases that have more longer-term impacts on the use of urban niche spaces:

////// Restaurant Day, Helsinki ////// A day for anyone to start up a guerrilla restaurant

Image by jonnatammisto

Restaurant Day is a food carnival in Helsinki when anyone can open a restaurant for a day, and the best of all is – no permits needed! Imagine that you can order a sandwich that is served in a basket, lowering down from a 3rd floor apartment window?

Image by jonnatammisto

The 4th pop-up restaurant day was just celebrated on February 4th 2012. It has been a success because it encouraged everyone to be creative in making food (which most people like to do), making a one day business (with lots of fun) and turning a home or a street into a restaurant (like a carnival). As described in The Pop-up City:

…a Forager Baker kitchen where everyone could make their own pizza from fresh picked ingredients in a stone oven and a Soup King serving soup and advising its customers to buy plates in the nearby flea. Restaurant Day was organised through a Facebook event and food was literally popping everywhere; in the streets, parks, clothing shops as well as Helsinki homes.

It’s interesting to see how this experiment keeps encouraging more fresh restaurant concepts, and how the urban regulation will react to this informal initiative. To get more impressions of Restaurant Day you can check this Flickr album

////// Meanwhile Space ////// Connecting temporary users to vacant properties

image source: http://www.meanwhilespace.com

Meanwhile Space connects temporary users (e.g. artists, start-up entrepreneurs or charities) to landlords with available spaces, in which temporary leases are organized. As described Meanwhile Space’s mission:

Meanwhile Space works with landlords, landowners, developers and local authorities to relieve them temporarily of liabilities (insurance, rates, security etc.) associated with holding redundant shops, offices, cleared land etc. whilst an appropriate commercial solution is being sought. By working with local communities and other stakeholders, interim or ‘Meanwhile,’ uses are deployed to reanimate the space and provide opportunities for community benefit and social enterprise.

This creates mutual benefit for both the vacant property owners and the temporary users who, on the one side can finally release their frozen properties, and on the other side can finally afford spaces to start up. On Meanwhile space’s website you can find practical resources / handbooks that describe how Meanwhile Lease works for both the landlords & users.

One of their initiatives is using a former Subway shop in Exmouth Market in London, which has already hosted many projects from an exhibition space (The Pallet Project during Clerkenwell Design Week), a vintage clothing shop (Harry’s smile) to a cake shop (Roving Chef).

The former Subway shop has been vacant for two years before Meanwhile Space re-activate it.

Launch of The Pallet Project. Images by Robyn-Louise Simms, New Deal of the Mind

Roving Chef - a one-week cake shop at the end of August, 2011.

Click this Meanwhile Space Forum to see more images of these projects.

////// REC, Igualada ////// 3-days event that turns a village into a fashion outlet

Preparation of the pop-up shop Desigual at REC store. Image source: http://www.recstores.com

REC claims itself as ‘experimental store’ by transforming old factories in the village Igualada into pop-up shops, where the emerging design brands offer their stock at incredible (affordable) prices. What makes this initiative exciting is the choice of location – a decaying town that has a long tradition of tanning and textile industries. This event thus connects the locals, physically and mentally, back to their industrial heritage & tradition.

The following video shows the first edition of REC.01, giving an impression of Igualada and the process of reviving abandoned buildings:

The REC.05 is going to celebrate its 5th edition during June 6-8, 2012. Click this google map to browse the route of this year.

Related articles

• Pop-up! Creative use of niche spaces (nestproject.wordpress.com)
• Pop-up! Creative use of niche spaces #2 (nestproject.wordpress.com)
• There is an growing necessity / interest in running temporary stores or collaborative shops. In the next post, I’d like to share with you some cases & inspirations of these retail interior. Stay tuned!

Pop-up! Creative use of niche spaces #2

In 2011, I have posted an article with the same title. Together with another article Rent A Shelf and start up a collaborative pop-up shop, they were the most visited posts last year. In 2012, I’d like to look at the term Pop-up not only from the trendy retailing examples but also those improvisational, informal and temporary cases spotted in Taiwan.

////// case one ////// sharing shop spaces or occupying pedestrian area //////
In Taiwanese urban context, sharing spaces is actually triggered by many private shop renters who use the space to make extra profit. Imagine a retail shop owner who rents a space for 1000 euro/ month, and then share the shop space with other two sub-renters who pay 500 euro/ month each. In this way, they share the initial investment & risks, and could possibly attract more customers.

In Taipei: two food vendors share one storefront.

The idea to generate more income is so attractive that many shop renters even claim the pedestrian zone and rent them to other street food venders. In the picture below you can see: the shop owner has moved out to become the street vendor (where the red arrow is pointing), in order to rent the storefront to another shop. He even rents out the pedestrian zone to another street food vender.

You can see the shop owner occupies the left corner outside of the storefront, and another food vender rents the pedestrian zone in front of the shop.

Occupy the pedestrian zone.

In the picture above, you can see the owner of the convenient store (which opens 24 hours) has also rented the pedestrian zone to other vendors during the day.

The above mentioned examples actually get media attention only when they are being spotted as illegal business, and are considered as planning defect. Though on the other hand, they have created shared value by intensifying the use of the space.

////// case two ////// pop-up sales and temporary stores in vacant spaces ////////
Far before Pop-up has become a trend, there were already temporary shops filling up the vacant retail stores in the cities. This kind of pop-up stores, or temporary outlets were emerged out of an economic situation: in the time of bad economy, retailers could save money on interior decoration and quickly clear their stock; property owners could profit from short-term tenants rather than leaving the space vacant.

Picture source: urbanphoto.net, by K.Y. Cheng

One of Urbanphoto’s article, Temporary Stores Thrive as Others Fade, has looked at this kind of temporary shops in the context of Hong Kong:

“Since many retailers signed contracts at the top of the market one or two years ago, rents remain high and so does the potential for bankruptcy. When shops go out of business, landlords are faced with a few options: bide their time by keeping the space empty, slash rents, or play host to a temporary store that will help them cover costs until they find a new permanent tenant.”

////// case 3 ////// social selling and the collaborative shop //////
A recent article in The Pop-up city has mentioned Social Selling, predicting that it will become a growing trend in 2012. In Taiwan, social selling or in another word collaborative shop, has been always a reality. Just around the corner of my parents’ apartment in Taipei, I’ve spotted a tea shop (1m x 1m space) nested in a bike store.

For a start-up business, a small-, affordable- space at a prominent location is all that it needs. For many online business, renting a small space together with others as a show point or just popping up at various locations – seem to be more effective than occupying a big high-street storefront. It’s exciting to see this happening in world-wide cities – private initiatives and non-profit organizations are starting to share retail, working or restaurant spaces. By making the spaces more shareable for multiple, mixed or temporary use, the value of spaces can thus be intensified and multiplied.

In my next post, I’ll share some international cases where collaborative shops are created with more social or non-for-profit approaches.

Ending note: I’d like to thank Boundary Unlimited who has inspired me a lot about Asian informal urban development and brought my interest back to my own Taiwanese urban experience.

The nest of The Mouse Mansion (Het Muizenhuis)

I’d love to share this winter wonder with you for this specific moment of the year.
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It was an year ago, around the same period of Christmas holidays, that this installation The Mouse Mansion (Het Muizenhuis) popped up in the window of my neighbor’s house. Its surprising presence has surely created a new attraction in my neighborhood. Everyday curious crowds hung in front of the window; kids especially excitedly stuck their faces on the glass and crawled up and down of their parents in order to see every corner of this miniature house.

Well, the surprise is not just for the kids. I was also amazed after giving it a close look – these mice poppets, the miniature house, the furnishing of the house, the bathroom fixtures and the kitchenware…etc., every detail of this miniature house is crafted all by an artist, Karina Schaapman.

The making of:
From the picture above, you can see that these water vases are actually made of paper!

An impression on the structure of the house before we get closer to look into the rooms…

The wall paper and all those blankets on the shelves…

The candle holder on the wall (right side)…

The tiles in the bathroom, the weighter, and the garbage bag next to the trash can…

The lady’s corner…

Bakery and the delicatessen…of course, the bycicle! These are mice in the Netherlands!

This is my favorite, Oliebollen street vendor – Oliebollen is a bit like donuts (fried dough) a traditional Dutch treat for December.

This window is located at Weesperzijde adjacent to the river Amstel. There are some café restaurants next to it. Beyond the event days, it’s just a domestic / and transit route. During the month when The Mouse Mansion was nested, the anonymous window has created a new point of interest. Since then, I see more often that these kind of temporary window gallery popping up in my neighborhood.

Though this year, The Mouse Mansion has found a permanent nest at OBA (Amsterdam Public Library), so I’m not able to say hello to these mice everyday anymore.

Now this book is lying everywhere in the bookstores in Amsterdam, and of course now it’s also in my book shelf. Though The Mouse Mansion will not come back to my neighbor’s window, I’ll have a cozy winter with the book accompany me.

Check the official blog of The Mouse Mansion / Het Muizenhuis.
http://the-mouse-mansion.blogspot.com (in English)
http://hetmuizenhuis.blogspot.com (in Dutch)

Rent A Shelf and start up a collaborative pop-up shop

In my previous post about space sharing, I’ve mentioned the idea of flexible ownerships of a shop space; for example, anyone can sell/ promote products on a shop’s wall. It is a growing retail store concept – instead of investing a shop space by one’s own, more and more artists, designers and start-up retailers are investing together and become ‘temporary co-owners’ of a shop. This new trend of Owning a Shop Together not only helps the small, start-up retailers to invest less, but also creates great product varieties for the customers.

Onedayshop in Amsterdam. image source: popupcity.net

For example, Onedayshop is a furnished ‘vacant’ retail space open for short-term (1 day – 1 week) lease. A recent post by Pop-up city says:

For customers this initiative is great to test a brand’s products and to find out whether it would be a good idea to rent a shop on their own. Like with exhibitions, the opening party is the best moment to sell creative products, as the artist’s own network is present at that moment.

Here I’d like to share with you three other interesting retailing stores around the world. They are not necessarily representative; but they have all tried to create marketplaces that effectively connect individual sellers & buyers together. These are emerging retail spaces that are collaboratively run by individual sellers / temporary shop owners.

1. Tokyo Pass The Baton Vintage Shop:

Shop space of Pass The Baton in Omotesando, Tokyo.

Launched with an opening party together with an online webshop, some say it’s the best second-hand store of the world with a statement:

The modern marketplace contains a vast diversity of commercial products…….creating something new is a wonderful thing, but taking good care of an object that is already there can be magical.
Pass on your personal culture.
It’s a new way of recycling.

At Pass The Baton, you’ll find Items for sale presented not only by images, but also by a brief profile of the seller. Beyond the flea markets, this is a marketplace both physical and online for buyers and sellers to exchange their ‘personal culture’.

2. Singapore CACTUS Farm:
This is a good business model of boxXshop – as I have mentioned many times in my previous posts – a concept that prevails many Asian cities including Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei. It’s slogan: ‘get a prime location for $5.00 a day!’

Cactus cubic shop in Singapore.

For young designers, Cactus Farm an affordable and fully serviced retail space in a shopping mall to showcase their ideas and products. Together with other temporary co-owners, you can rent a cubic space for a reasonable fee (and for a short time) to test the market of your product!

3. Muenster / Munich Rent-a-shelf:
I came across this article ‘Rent-a-shelf: a new way to sell and advertise – including yourself’ that tells the new trend of Rent-a-shelf in Germany which was spotted by Pop-up city (yes, again!). I’m sure that there are more examples of Rent-a-shelf around the world, since it’s a more spontaneous action and might not be properly documented. Anyway, what’s interesting in this article, is about a young man who withdrew from facebook and rented a shelf in a shop to advertise himself as an available single. Do check this article which contains some good thoughts and interviews about these space-sharing initiatives in Germany. As the article says:

A simple shelf in a small store is really all a person needs to advertise and sell their products and services…

If you have a shop and would like to generate more flows and curiosities, why not share your shelf and create a collaborative pop-up shelf shop?

My space is also Your space: Space Sharing

This morning I came across the blog collaborative consumption (manifested as ‘What’s mine is Yours’) then I have chatted with a friend about P2P sharing cars, and besides I’m busy with pop-up store by using available boxes at Lloyd Hotel.

We will borrow these boxes from Lloyd Hotel

These seem like random topics but they all shake up the way we think about ownerships.

Gradually, we are creating new values to exchange services or properties – besides money. These days, more and more new initiatives are enabling everyone to share available resources with the others, and turning My properties into Our properties: examples like share un-used cars (ex. LiftShare), share spare spaces at home (ex. AirBnB), share vacant desks in the office (ex. deskwanted) or simply share working space together (ex. The Hub).

New off-line marketplaces or on-line platforms are stimulating flexible ownerships, and creating new opportunities by sharing. One interesting reference is this infographic: the Collaborative Home, posted by FastCo Design, reporting all the spared things you can share from home:

image source: FastCo Design

This flexible ownership of properties, is one of the major inspirations behind the initiative of pop-up store boxXshop. This is also what Nest Project aims to do – mobilize individual makers of arts and crafts by connecting them to available spaces. There are plenty of spaces left vacant or available to share in our cities. With the current web technology and mobile phone applications, it’s possible to enable any individual to launch a pop-up store spontaneously. Imagine that a shop owner can tag a piece of sharable space, such as a piece of wall. So people who received this push notification can walk in this shop and say “hi I want to sell this, can I hang it on the wall??”

Further reading:
1. Pop-Up Coworking: A Way To Work Anywhere (with interesting photos), published by Shareable.
2. Home-Sharing Programs Offer Longer-Term Housing Solutions, published by Shareable.
3. I have started to collect some examples of marketplaces & platforms that enable individuals to connect their available sources (time, properties, services) to others that need them. Let me know if you know other interesting marketplaces & platforms. I’d like to keep collecting this information and share with you at Pinterest!