Fila's Innovative Use of Stores
Eric Dorfman has no retail experience, but on June 2 he’ll find himself in the middle of one of Los Angeles’ most competitive streets for retail.
He’ll open the Filativa Anteprima store for high-profile Italian sportswear brand Fila on the 8100 block of Melrose Avenue. It’s not going to stay in business for long, just 30 days. But Dorfman said that’s the point of the store.
He’s an advertising executive and his company, Location NYC, found a niche of advertising through retail.
The Filativa Anteprima store will specifically advertise Fila’s new footwear and apparel label, Filativa. The store will not sell anything per se. Instead shoppers will be able to browse through the Filativa brand, drink Italian coffee and draw sketches that can be reproduced on cotton Fila T-shirts.
Pop-up stores cost $50,000 to $150,000 to produce, according to Dorfman, but he measures the success of a temporary store by the number of Fila shirts he gives out. When the Filativa Anteprima store operated in New York’s SoHo neighborhood in April, more than 3,000 people visited the shop to make their own designs on Fila shirts.
The main ingredient for the Fila pop-up store is plexiglass. The floor of the less than 1,000-square-foot store will be constructed out of lavender and white plexiglass, the chairs and tables and coffee bar out of red and white plexiglass.
Filativa will be sold through specialty stores beginning in October; price points range from $34 for men’s T-shirts to $189 for a woman’s quilted jacket. —Andrew Asch
