When various holidays roll around, the pop-up store soon makes its appearance, be it for fireworks, Halloween costumes or Christmas gifts. As the trend has grown over the years, so have the types of stores and possible locations for them. Most recently, Ten Thousand Villages of Greenville has joined that list with the opening of its first ever pop-up store this week at the corner of Main and Washington streets.
While this holiday season welcomes the store’s first downtown pop-up location, its permanent location in Lewis Plaza on Augusta Street started as a seasonal store, said Claire Winkler, Ten Thousand Villages board member. “By opening this pop-up store in downtown Greenville, we hope to introduce Ten Thousand Villages’ mission, products and artisans to many new audiences, including downtown residents and businesses, other local residents and the ever-growing number of visitors to our city.”
As a nonprofit retailer, the store uses its revenues to buy more from artisans and develop new source markets. To keep overhead low, both the pop-up store and the permanent location are primarily staffed with volunteers.
“We have three part-time paid employees at the downtown seasonal store and one full-time and two part-time paid employees at our permanent store,” said Pelosky. “We are mostly staffed by volunteers, and those people are customers.”
The store first came to Greenville around 2007 when Fleming Markel received a gift from another Ten Thousand Villages store. Markel and others raised money for the store through selling merchandise at local churches.
The store sells home décor and gift items from developing countries, made by local artisans, and produced without child labor, said Wendy Frattolin, marketing committee chairwoman. “All of our products are purchased using fair-trade principles. We talk to our artisans and agree on a fair price. The artisans are given 50 percent up front for materials to make the crafts, and then we pay them the other 50 percent once our order arrives, so our artisans are paid in full before any crafts come into Ten Thousand Villages.”
The organization’s goal is “to increase product sales so we can help more artisans and their families lift themselves from poverty,” said Winkler. Ten Thousand Villages is heavily involved with Fair Trade Greenville, a program to make Greenville a Fair Trade Town by educating people about fair trade. It frequently partners with the Red Cross, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and area schools.
Although the store supports Fair Trade, it encourages buying local. “We say buy local when you can,” said Frattolin. “We aren’t saying not to buy local, but think about fair trade when buying.”
For more information, call 864-239-4120, or visit greenville.tenthousandvillages.com.
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10 Guidelines for Nonprofit Retail
1. Define your mission.
2. Be obsessively transparent.
3. Invest in long-term causes.
4. It’s not enough to just give nonprofits money.
5. Lead with impact, not branding or splash.
6. Involve employees.
7. Connect customers to a cause beyond the purchase.
8. No markups.
9. Don’t exploit the cause.
10.Report on impact.
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