Tucked away in the back corner of Madewell’s flagship location on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, there’s a wall of striking coffee-table books that could be mistaken at first blush for an interior design prop. But look closer and you’ll see a message stenciled on the wall above the shelves: “Curated by McNally Jackson.”
That’s because Madewell created the display in partnership with the local bookshop chain, and customers can scan a QR code to buy the books online.
“What Madewell was asking us to do was co-curate a selection of beautiful art books so they could have them in their store,” Kat Pongrace, director of outreach at McNally Jackson, told Retail Brew. “It was really mutually beneficial.”
Madewell, she added, gave McNally a general sense of what kinds of books it was looking for, and then the bookseller put together a list of 100 titles that “felt a little newer, very aesthetically pleasing” with “multiple points of access for many different kinds of audiences.” Fifty of these titles are now featured in the display.
While shop-in-shops are becoming more popular—particularly in big box retailers such as Kohl’s, which is leveraging them to lure in new customers—the pop-up bookstore has yet to go mainstream. But along Broadway in midtown Manhattan, at least two higher-end retailers have tried it out. The other, Filson, sells premium outdoor clothing just a few blocks away.
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