Pop-up from Australia

It is nine years since Stu ­McIntosh set up his company Fuzz Yard in Melbourne Australia. Since then, the entrepreneur has been producing a wide range of pet requisites with his 18 staff. “We produce a very premium range of natural grooming products for dogs that are produced in Australia, and also design and manufacture designer dog goods such as beds, bowls and collars,” says McIntosh. Considerable emphasis is placed on the design of the products. “We are very focused on producing pro­ducts that are going to be pleasing for the age groups of 15-45, as we see this is the key demographic of pet product consumers. Our design is very contemporary/street and we feel this helps differentiate us from others in the industry,” comments McIntosh. And the concept seems to be on the up. “Currently our strongest markets are Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and China. We also have distributors in other parts of Asia, the U.A.E, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium, and retailers buying direct in up to another 15 countries.” Fuzz Yard supplies around 2 000 clients in all. To gain further market penetration in Asia for Fuzz Yard’s brands, the company has been resorting to a new tactic for the last few months: opening so-called pop-up shops. These are shops that exist for only a few days, weeks or months and then disappear again. This guerrilla tactic offers various advantages: because pop-up shops are mostly opened in less busy streets or shopping quarters and the fittings are improvised for the most part, they are usually less cost-intensive than permanent stores. Savings are also made on advertising, because the news that such a store is open normally only travels by word of mouth. Pop-up in Japan Fuzz Yard opened its first pop-up shop in Tokyo/Japan. “Fuzz Yard has been adored in Japan for many years, as we find the Japanese customers are very aware of design and quality, so they love our products. We thought it would be the perfect market for us to further grow the brand within Asia, as Japan and more specifically Tokyo is seen as a leader of the region,” says McIntosh. “The location was very important for us and we had initially targeted opening the pop-up shop in Shibuya. However, a suitable location didn’t present itself, so we went for the affluent Tokyo suburb of Aoyama. Our distributor in Japan was very helpful and key for us, as the language barrier was a hurdle as well as the on-ground logistics.” According to the Fuzz Yard boss, the idea behind the pop-up…