When David Campbell started Boxman Studios in 2009, it was out of curiosity. A former real estate broker and developer, he was looking for a new concept after the 2008 crash of the real estate market.
Campbell came across an article on shipping container architecture and saw the promise in potential uses, from hospitals to foodservice to retail.
“He got a container, found a yard, had a buddy who could weld, and started cutting into it to see what he could come up with,” says Vinay Patel, the Charlotte, N.C.-based company’s marketing strategist.
Boxman Studios ended up on the front end of a major trend: custom-fabricating shipping containers into portable shops and booths.
In its first six years, the company has already moved four times to larger spaces. In 2014, Inc. magazine named Boxman the fastest growing company in Charlotte, noting that the company increased annual revenue more than 3,000 percent from 2010 to 2013, bringing in $4.3 million in 2013 alone. Clients purchasing customized shipping containers from Boxman include Google, Red Bull and Samsung.
Going to the Consumer
As online retailers continue to take market share away from brick-and-mortar shops, Patel says small, mobile, pop-up shopping is one way to fight back.
“With an online retailer, there’s no touch or feel. The consumer still values being able to inspect the product,” says Patel. “The compromise is going to your consumer instead of waiting for them to come to you.”
Reaching out to customers is one of the reasons shipping containers have become a staple at events like festivals, concerts and sporting events — where retailers know their target consumers will already be.
Containers make appearances at most major sporting events now, including the Super Bowl, X Games and NHL Playoffs, says Erik Patten, global sales and business development manager at Steel Space Concepts, another shipping container fabricator with offices in Quebec and Boston.
“It’s a great alternative in terms of cost as well as a lack of brick and mortar. If you’re looking to have some visibility at an event, it’s a great way to have a retail location but in a temporary format,” Patten says.
The versatility and transportability of the shipping containers is what makes them most valuable, he adds. Retailers can get in and out of an area quickly and easily, even locations where having a full shop would be difficult or cost-prohibitive.
“There seemed to be a need for it,” says Patten. “This is a great way to recycle a product and transform it into a mobile marketing or retail platform.”
Seasonal retailers also benefit strongly from having a customizable and portable retail shop, according to Boxman’s Patel. The products can go where they’re in demand, without worrying about being anchored in a brick-and-mortar store year-round.
(Click for larger image) With a shipping container store, TaylorMade golf equipment can drive its Boxman Studios-designed retail store to any golf course or driving range in the country. With a portable store, the company can sell equipment in seasonal hot spots for golf without the cost of building a brick-and-mortar store.
“If you sell outdoor gear, you can head to Florida or southern California in the summer months and sell surfing gear or scuba gear,” says Patel. “Then when winter hits, you move out to Colorado and sell skiing gear. Going where your customers are is the most effective way to reach them.”
Retailers can also use the containers as a way to test out markets before committing fully, Patel says. Rather than spending the massive amounts of money to build a shop in a new market where it’s unsure if a business will succeed, a pop-up shop in a shipping container allows businesses to test the waters first.
“If you don’t have a presence in Nebraska, you can spend tons of money determining if that’s the right place to be. Shipping container shops let you see if the sales are there to support you,” says Patel.
Perfect for Quick Development
The ability to set up quickly but stay as long as necessary makes shipping containers ideal for areas that need retail faster than a brick-and-mortar building can be set up. One example is during disaster recovery.
In September 2010, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch, the second-largest city in New Zealand. Less than six months later, it happened again — this time a 6.3-magnitude quake, but much closer to downtown, devastating the city’s infrastructure.
In the aftermath of the back-to-back disasters, Christchurch needed a way to breathe life back into the downtown area, which was 80 percent demolished according to Re:START, an organization rebuilding the city.
The solution came in the form of shipping container retailers. As a fast, easy way to build without brick and mortar, a container mall was opened just seven months after the second earthquake. Upon opening, the “container mall” featured 27 retailers — a number which has since grown to 50.
Although it was meant to be temporary until downtown could be repaired, the solution was so popular that it was made a permanent feature of the city, says Claire Ginn, business development manager for Denver-based shipping container fabrication company Popshopolis, who took a month-long trip to the site in December.
“They needed a quick, affordable and durable solution,” says Ginn. “Between these huge, deserted skyscrapers, there are these shipping containers with restaurants and coffee shops, which are actually cemented to the ground now.”
Popshopolis, which has made portable retail for clients such as AT&T, Dish and Mountain Dew, likes shipping containers for another big benefit — durability.
“These things were designed with strength suitable to withstand shipment, storage, and handling. They are pretty much indestructible,” says Ginn. “A single shipping container can easily withstand the weight of 8 or 10 more fully loaded containers on the top of it.”
The container mall concept isn’t just for disaster recovery. The idea is taking hold in artsy neighborhoods all over the world, including London and Denver, and Ginn says she expects it to continue growing.
“They’re cool; they’re affordable; they’re innovative. People can turn [shipping containers] into anything they want,” she says. “We get hundreds of inquiries each year and the number is only growing.”
In Buffalo, N.Y., Boxman Studios fabricated two containers for the redevelopment of the city’s Canalside district. The booths are used for ticket sales and rentals — ice skates during the winter, bicycles and kayaks during the summer.
(Click for larger image) At the Buffalo, N.Y., Canalside development, shipping containers built by Boxman Studios serve as both the ticket booth and the rental center for ice skates in the winter and bicycles and kayaks in the summer.
“There’s a lot of redevelopment going on around the country, especially outside metro areas,” says Boxman’s Patel. “They need that economic stimulation. It’s very difficult for a city in that situation to put down permanent infrastructure.”
Shipping container villages give cities a chance to show “proof of concept” before committing to a full-scale retail district, Patel adds.
In San Francisco, a shipping container village named The Yard at Mission Rock opened in March in the parking lot of AT&T Park, the home of the San Francisco Giants. It uses 15 decommissioned containers from the nearby port, and is the first phase of a larger brick-and-mortar development in the area.
“Because the neighborhood has grown up around the ballpark, we thought we should really offer a community space for all these neighbors that now live and work here,” says Fran Weld, director of real estate for the Giants.
Weld says the organization looked at many options for how to build a temporary village, so that it can be moved from area to area as the permanent development takes shape. Shipping containers won out for their versatility.
“They’re very flexible and modular. You can think of it as one unit and you can expand and contract and play with the arrangement of that one unit again and again.
Current retail tenants include The NorthFace outdoor gear and SFMade, a co-op of products from local manufacturers. The village only took six weeks to get up and running, and will stay in its current location for at least two years, Weld says. The site is also adding a weekly farmer’s market using the infrastructure — such as restrooms and seating — that The Yard provides to the neighborhood.
Not a One-Size-Fits-All Solution
Even those who use and fabricate shipping container retail shops admit that they are an alternative to brick-and-mortar stores, but not a replacement. Containers also come with their own unique set of challenges.
(Click for larger image) Customers mingle outside a The North Face shipping container store at The Yard at Mission Rock in San Francisco. Using multiple customized containers, The North Face is able to sell its outdoors clothing and equipment in the temporary shipping container mall constructed outside AT&T Park.
When designing The Yard at Mission Rock, Weld says the Giants’ biggest problem was finding out how to properly go through the permitting and approval process. Since the concept is relatively new, the legal procedures are murky.
“There isn’t a blueprint for that process in the same way there is for building a building,” says Weld. “In some ways it was more complicated than building a building.”
Popshopolis’ Ginn confirms that challenge, noting that cities aren’t sure yet how to zone mobile shops. “We are hopeful that as cities catch on, this will be an easier and faster process.”
Another challenge of the concept is selecting the best way to transport the containers, Ginn says, as there are options that use pickup trucks, flatbeds, 18-wheelers, trains and boats.
Ginn also notes that the design process can be extremely intimidating, especially for start-ups or other young companies without a firmly established brand style and identity.
“You are starting with a blank canvas that has nothing except steel walls,” says Ginn. “You have to think about every single detail when designing.”
Unlimited options mean versatility, but that versatility can lead to overwhelm.
“We like to compare it to designing a home for the first time; there’s flooring, electrical, everything,” says Ginn. “We offer as much information as we can, but for people who are just starting to research and don’t know what they’re going for, it can turn them away.”
This same versatility is what allows retailers to combat the main complaint, though, according to Steel Space’s Patten. That’s the lack of space for displaying inventory.
“The way to combat the square footage is interior design. We build all custom furnishing and fixtures. We’re able to incorporate mobile walls. It’s just really the way that the floor plan is set up.”
Patten adds that multiple units can be used to fabricate a larger retail space that is still transportable.
Boxman’s Patel agrees that design is one way to fight the small footprint of a shipping container. “You can make it open on all four sides. You can make another level. There’s flexibility in that construction to create the size you really need,” he says.
Even so, Patel notes that Boxman Studios “doesn’t claim to replace brick and mortar altogether.” The shipping containers are best for reaching customers directly where they are, and offering a personal, hands-on experience that can’t be replicated in a permanent location.
“If you want to put racks and racks of clothing in the shop, we cannot do that. If you want to put 100 desktop computers in a 20-by-eight-foot space, no you can’t do that.
“We’re a very unique solution to a very unique problem.”
— Jeff Shaw