Akademik

n.

A store that opens in an empty retail location and then deliberately closes after a few weeks or months. Also: pop-up retailer.

[A] growing number of merchants are opening shops and abruptly shutting them down soon after — on purpose. These quickie retail operations — known as pop-ups — are showing up throughout Southern California and around the nation, filling in the gaps at recession-battered shopping centers for a fraction of the regular rents. Once limited to seasonal shops and dusty liquidation centers, pop-up stores are now being opened by some of the nation's biggest retailers.

—Andrea Chang, " 'Pop-up' stores becoming an overnight sensation: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pop-up17-2009oct17,0,6635106.story," Los Angeles Times, October 17, 2009

Rising up from the graves of recently departed big-box stores, a wave of ghoulish retailers has descended upon the Chicago area...."We like the big boxes like the Circuit City stores or the Linens 'n Things that may have gone out of business," said Don Rose, director of marketing for Halloween USA, a Michigan-based company with more than 250 temporary Halloween stores in the U.S....The fly-by-night costumers have proliferated over the past several years, driven in part by a glut of vacancies and a handful of aggressive national retailers. Popping up for about two months — usually from Labor Day through Nov. 1 — the low-rent, high-profile tenants have become an integral part of the holiday, which is taking a hit from the recession but is still expected to generate nearly $5 billion in nationwide sales for the season...."Pop-up" stores represent a big trend in retailing because they're an efficient way to attract shoppers and attention, particularly when so many malls have vacancies. This Christmas season, Toys R Us plans to roll out about 340 temporary Holiday Express stores.

—Robert Channick, " Halloween stores: http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sat-halloween-store-oct17,0,1960687.story," Chicago Tribune, October 17, 2009

At the cheap and cheerful end of the fashion spectrum, mass-marketer Target — "Tar-jay" to the giddy cognoscenti — opened a "pop-up" store for the launch of Isaac Mizrahi's house line last year for a limited six-week run.)

—Karen von Hahn, "Guerrilla retailing," The Globe and Mail, February 28, 2004

An enthusiastic wave to reader Laurie Mullikin for passing along this timely phrase.