Right across from an Amazon campus in Seattle, at 2252 7th Avenue, there’s a store.

Or is it a kaleidoscope?

At the moment, it’s a hair salon called Salon Voda. But before that, for about five weeks at the end of 2021, it was Cancelled Plans, a scented-candle shop. Since July of 2020, in fact, about 16 different brands have taken turns selling their wares there, from e-bikes (VanMoof), to women’s clothing (4Twenty4 Boutique), to organic chocolates (Theo Chocolate), to a lifestyle pet brand (Boo Oh).

In between those varied tenants, surprisingly, there were no crews of beefy carpenters knocking down walls and installing drywall, or electricians rewiring new fixtures, or entire sets of display tables and racks being hauled in and out. And yet, as if sprinkled with fairy dust by the retail deities themselves, the 1,037-square-foot space somehow seemed to be completely transformed from one occupant to the next.

Welcome to Periodic. This will sound like an oxymoron, but it’s not: It’s a permanent pop-up shop, designed for brands to set up a store for as little as two weeks—and then for another one to move in. Wash. Rinse. Retail.

• All of the display racks and tables are completely modular, meaning they can be reconfigured like Lego pieces (and without requiring an engineering degree).
• A dressing room, the freestanding kind with the curtain that wraps around it like a clawfoot bathtub’s shower curtain, parachutes in for clothing store tenants.
• And a big digital screen can be used for brand messaging.

This is all handy for a revolving pop-up like Periodic, but these days, flexibility and agility in store design are top-of-mind even for retailers who’ve been rolling the awning up and down at the same address for generations.

Morph power to you: Because “the consumer has been and will continue to evolve so rapidly,” stores “have to create a store environment that can morph with them,” Melissa Gonzalez, CEO and founder of The Lionesque Group, the New York-based experiential retail agency that designed Periodic, told Retail Brew.

Click here to read the full story. And check out our series on store design here.—AAN

Less than six months after making its initial splash, e-comm platform Canal has notched a new round of funding, raising a $22.5 million Series A.

• The $$ will let Canal build out its team of engineers, along with staffing up in sales, marketing, and operations to help meet growing demand.

The startup, which links “like-minded” companies to sell each other’s stuff—“We’re not the shelf or the products you put on the shelf, we are your access to inventory,” Bennett Carroccio, Canal’s CEO and co-founder, previously explained—has already brought about 165 brands onto its platform.

• Olipop and Andie Swim, for two, are part of Canal’s curated network. Carroccio told Retail Brew it has 1,000+ brands on the waitlist (which averages about two weeks) to join.
• Carroccio said Canal’s platform makes up more than 50% of online orders for a few of its onboarded brands.

“[We’re] helping them just to be able to sell to a consumer that didn’t know them already,” Carroccio said. “They’re finding consumers elsewhere on the internet, and really expanding their scope of who they could sell to.”

What’s next? Canal’s introduced an app on the Shopify App Store so brands with existing partners can also use its tech. It plans to build on it and expand to other e-comm backends like Magento, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce.

• “Canal’s future is to become platform-agnostic,” Carroccio said.—JS

When Russia invaded Ukraine late last month, brands and businesses scrambled to respond. But soon enough, retailers across the world started to announce they would halt operations—at least temporarily—in Russia.

From Apple to Nike to H&M, the list is growing. And consumers are urging more businesses to boycott the country: #BoycottPepsi and #BoycottCocaCola have been trending on Twitter, adding to pressures to suspend ties with Russia.

There are also those that have decided to take a different stance. Uniqlo’s parent company, Fast Retailing Co., for example, said it will keep the retailer’s 50 Russian stores up and running.

• “Clothing is a necessity of life. The people of Russia have the same right to live as we do,” CEO Tadashi Yanai said in an email to Nikkei, adding that “everyone should oppose” war.

Press pause: Retail Brew has compiled a running list of retailers that have paused business in Russia—Adidas and McDonald’s are among the latest to do so. Click here to see it in full. And check back as we’ll continue to update the list.—KM

Today’s top retail reads.

Word for word: Receiving hateful comments online is “par for the course when you are an outspoken brand run by women of color,” said Omsom co-founder Kim Pham, and Asian American female food entrepreneurs have taken different approaches to confronting their trolls. (The New York Times)

Discount discord: While frugal shoppers love coupons, brands and retailers aren’t so fond of them. But getting rid of them often doesn’t go over well. (CNN)

Child’s play: A breakdown of how kids’ clothing brand PatPat—known as the “Shein of children’s apparel”—compares to the fast-fashion giant. (Jing Daily)

Here are the winning plays. Contentsquare’s CX Playbook has behind-the-scenes info on what the biggest names in retail—like Sephora, The North Face, and Sonos—are doing to solve their marketing challenges. Get all the deets on which types of content really work here.

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What happened in the world of retail this week in…2004 and beyond? Retail Brew takes you way, way, way back.

Kick off your loafers, sneakers, or what have you, as we walk through the week:

• On March 6, 2016, Balenciaga debuted its first collection under Demna Gvasalia (he now goes by just Demna) at Paris Fashion Week.
• On March 11, 2004, Gucci Group found its replacement for Tom Ford, who was leaving his role as creative director, in a team of four designers.
• And on March 11, 2014, Toms, the buy-one-donate-one shoe company—well, not anymore—decided it would start selling coffee.

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• The shoeless shoe store connecting e-commerce with brick-and-mortar shopping
• A last-mile delivery robot company switches gears
• This TikToker is delving into what makes DTC CPG businesses tick