What We Are Pop Up does

We Are Pop Up is a two-sided online marketplace that connects brands seeking temporary retail space with property owners offering short-term rentals, operating as REP BV from Amsterdam. Founded in 2012, the platform primarily serves fashion, food & beverage, art, and homeware brands looking for flexible retail space without long-term lease commitments, alongside retailers and shop owners with underutilized inventory. The platform lists 823+ unique pop-up spaces across the UK, US, and multiple European cities including London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome, Madrid, Milan, and Frankfurt, with footprint also extending to Mexico and Hong Kong.

The platform operates three core offerings: Full Spaces (entire venue rentals), ShopShares (shared space rental of rails, tables, windows, or shelves within boutiques, available in London and NYC), and a Brand Collaboration feature that facilitates brand-to-brand partnerships for joint pop-up events. The underlying technology is a self-serve marketplace with secure payment processing, social login integration (Facebook, Twitter OAuth), and country/space search functionality. Distribution relies on SEO for pop-up space queries, content marketing through a dedicated blog, and organic social sharing.

The business model is transaction-based: We Are Pop Up charges a commission on bookings made through the platform. Listed space prices range from £11/day to £18,000+/day, with volume discounts offered on some listings (15% for week+ rentals, 20% for month+ rentals). The company raised approximately $2.72M in disclosed funding between 2012 and 2014 from Arts Alliance, Ballpark Ventures, University College London (UCL), Springboard, and Techstars, with no subsequent funding rounds reported in the available data. Leadership comprises CEO Leon Goldwater and co-founders Alastair Moore and Mike Salter.

Name

We Are Pop Up

Legal name

We Are Pop Up

Website

https://wearepopup.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2012

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

We Are Pop Up is a two-sided online marketplace connecting fashion, food, art, and homeware brands with retailers and space owners for short-term pop-up retail and ShopShare rentals across Europe and the US.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Amsterdam

HQ country

Netherlands

HQ region

Europe

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Personnel, Operations

Revenue model

1. Transaction/Booking Commission: Platform charges transaction fees on bookings made through the marketplace. Space owners list spaces and brands book and pay securely through We Are Pop Up.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels3 records

Core offering

We Are Pop Up is an online marketplace that connects brands seeking temporary retail space with space owners offering short-term rentals. The platform lists 823+ unique pop-up spaces across Europe and the US, and offers Full Spaces (entire venue rentals) and ShopShares (shared rails, tables, windows, or shelves within boutiques in London and NYC). It facilitates discovery, secure booking, payment processing, and brand-to-brand collaboration matching for fashion, food, art, and homeware brands.

Product overview

We Are Pop Up is a marketplace platform for booking unique pop-up retail spaces and ShopShares across Europe and select cities globally. The platform operates with three core offerings: Full Spaces (renting entire retail venues), ShopShares (renting shared portions of boutiques such as rails, tables, windows, or shelves), and Brand Collaboration features enabling brands to connect for joint pop-up initiatives. The platform facilitates space discovery, booking, and secure payment processing between space owners and brands.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• ShopShare: Rent rails, tables, windows or shelves in boutiques across London and NYC with ShopShare

Products and services

• Full Spaces Marketplace offering for renting entire pop-up retail spaces. Allows fashion, food, art, and homeware brands to discover and book full spaces for creative retail, product launches, and events. Pricing ranges from £11/day to £18,000+/day depending on location, size, and amenities, with volume discounts available (15% off week+, 20% off month+).
• ShopShare
• Brand Collaboration
• Space Listing Service
• Space Booking Service

Named customers4 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration2 records

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• Appear Here: Appear Here is the leading global marketplace for short-term retail and pop-up space rental, operating across London, New York, Paris, Los Angeles and other major cities. It is the most direct head-to-head competitor to We Are Pop Up, offering identical brand-to-space matching with secure payments.
• Peerspace: Peerspace is an online marketplace for booking hourly and daily unique venues — including pop-up retail spaces, event venues, and meeting rooms. It serves brands and individuals seeking short-term physical space, mirroring We Are Pop Up's core transactional model on the demand side.
• Storefront: Storefront is an online marketplace specializing in short-term and pop-up retail space rentals, connecting brands with landlords globally. Its marketplace mechanics (booking + payment + curated inventory) closely mirror We Are Pop Up's value proposition for fashion and lifestyle brands.
• Liquidspace: Liquidspace operates a marketplace for flexible and on-demand commercial space including offices, meeting rooms, and retail. While more office-leaning, it applies the same transactional short-term space-rental model and competes for the same space-owner supply pool in overlapping metros.
• Splacer: Splacer (now part of Peerspace) was a marketplace for booking unique short-term event and retail venues in major US cities. Its brand-on-demand space booking model and curated inventory positioning were directly analogous to We Are Pop Up's marketplace thesis.
• Breather: Breather operates an on-demand marketplace for booking meeting rooms, offices, and short-term commercial spaces by the hour or day. Comparable technology (instant booking, payment processing) and supply-side thesis (monetizing underused space) overlap with We Are Pop Up's ShopShare and full-space models.

Emerging players

• Spacious: Spacious transforms underutilized retail and commercial space into flexible workspaces on a marketplace basis, focused primarily on NYC. While office-leaning, it competes for the same vacant-retail-footprint supply and applies a similar marketplace-mediated monetization model.

Broad incumbents

• Eventbrite: Eventbrite is a major events-discovery and ticketing platform serving millions of organizers worldwide. While not space-rental, it shares marketplace DNA (two-sided platform, take-rate monetization, event-and-experience demand) and intersects with We Are Pop Up's food pop-up / supper-club use cases.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks4 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/wearepopup
• Facebookfacebook.com/wearepopup

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds5 records

Investors6 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about We Are Pop Up