Worth pops up for brand new store concept

A new company, Worth, is breathing new life into the high street by creating direct-to-consumer retail for well-known brands and re-inventing the ‘pop-up shop’ concept from mere PR stunt to a profitable business investment.

It’s the brainchild of Alex Johns, who has worked with brands including Maybelline, American Express and the BBC, and Paul Soanes, who previously set up experiential marketing agency iD.

Worth enables consumer brands to have their own retail channels, both online and in the real world – bringing together an absolute understanding of customer experience, the power of data and skillful retailing, which it calls ‘*connected retail*’. And it claims it has never been easier for brands to go straight to consumers with a combination of smartphone or tablet-based online retail and real life store presence on the high street.

Alex Johns says: ‘Pop-up stores have been fashionable for a while, but are usually designed purely as a PR stunt for a brand, often in a fancy central London location, which means they are often expensive luxuries in today’s economic environment ‘We help brands extend the ‘pop-up’ concept into a fully-fledged retail business that allows them to by-pass supermarkets or megastores and go straight to consumers, either online or through bricks and mortar stores. ‘The opportunity to retail direct has never been better – imagine brands controlling their own customer experience, collecting powerful data whilst making significant profits. Worth’s retail nous coupled with their proprietary technology enables brands to harness the opportunity to retail, which clearly has huge benefits for the future.’