The founder and CEO of retail pop-up marketplace Appear Here shares his entrepreneurial journey and advice for young founders looking to break through.
Background:
Ross Bailey’s love of entrepreneurship didn’t start in business school or a corporate job, but at the hair salon his parents owned in London.
“I watched my parents take this little shop and it became their livelihood,” he says to BoF’s founder and editor in chief, Imran Amed, describing himself as a “busybody” who rearranged furniture and conducted customer satisfaction surveys from a young age. “To me, entrepreneurship was a game. It was about ‘how do I get people involved and have a bit of fun?’”
That mindset eventually led him to found Appear Here, “the Airbnb of retail,” in 2014. “The story of the world … was that the high street is dead, nobody wants it. And we had a contrarian view on that. When you have small high street stores and streets, people want to be on them … our data has always backed it up.”
By 2019, Appear Here was a global business with 250,000 entrepreneurs signed up to the platform and 30,000 stores launched. The company has facilitated pop-ups for fashion giants like Louis Vuitton, Loewe and Supreme, a bookstore for Michelle Obama’s autobiography, as well as Harry’s House for pop superstar Harry Styles.
Then the pandemic hit. Appear Here went from having its best year ever and closing a funding round with a nine-figure valuation, to losing 95 percent of revenue with just months’ worth of cash left.
On this week’s episode of The BoF Podcast, Bailey shares his lessons and advice from the early days of founding a business and the role leaders play in leading employees and stakeholders through challenging times.
Key Insights:
Additional Resources:
How Temporary Pop-Ups Became a Permanent Strategy
What Happens When the E-Commerce Boom Ends
How to Open a Store in 2022 | BoF
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