Jewelry brand Pandora’s month-long, pop-up store in L.A. had top-performing foot traffic and sales compared to other L.A. stores. Plus, 80% of customers were new, which was the No. 1 KPI for the brand looking to glow up its brand identity.  

Jewelry brand manufacturer Pandora is looking to the Los Angeles shopper to rediscover its brand — how Pandora is more than just a charm bracelet — and its new collection. 

The global retailer launched a new line — the Talisman Collection — at the end of August. In October, it operated a pop-up store at Los Angeles shopping center The Grove to give the collection an experiential marketing boost.

Pandora’s new collection features 12 charms that have the look of an ancient coin with Latin phrases on them that symbolize special meaning. For example, one charm has two cupids and a heart on the front, and on the back there is the inscription “Amor Fati,” which means “Love of Fate” in Latin. Another charm features a swallow bird on the front and on the back the Latin phrase “Dum Vita Esta Spes Est,” which means “Where there is life, there is hope.”  

“We found that with this collection there was a bit more of a secret sauce over in L.A. with how the consumer responds to spirituality, how the consumer in the L.A. area responds to more of this type of jewelry aesthetic, and that’s why we chose L.A. for the market,” said Colby Jarvis, Director Go To Market, for Pandora.  

Pandora took over “The Glass Box” at The Grove, which is a space in the outdoor area of the mall that cycles through month-long brand activations and pop-ups throughout the year. Pandora tapped event production brand Gladiator Productions to design and construct the pop-up, and develop the pre-launch party to create buzz for the temporary store. Gladiator has a few dozen retail clients, and has produced several Glass Box activations, said Seth Dolan, founder and Chief Experience Officer.  

Pandora Reaches New Customers, Who Buy Multiple Items

The goal for the pop-up was to acquire new customers, which Pandora achieved, as 80% of the sales at the store were from new customers, Jarvis said.  

“Our No. 1 KPI was getting new customer acquisitions, in terms of getting new customers to look at Pandora and be introduced to the brand, which they might have been aware but might not have considered buying the product,” Jarvis said. “Another [KPI} was around people reappraising the brand. Specifically, across North America in the millennial age group, they might have seen Pandora as a company that they liked 10 years ago, but — in their thoughts — outgrown it.” 

These performance indicators are hard to measure, Jarvis said, but the large percent of new customers was a strong success indicator. The brand also looked at traffic and sales. Both of these metrics were in the top percentile compared with Pandora’s 12 other L.A. area stores. What’s more, the units per transaction at the pop-up was 2.86, which was higher than the L.A. fleet during that time period. This is all great news, Jarvis said.  

“The people who are already buying the brand, we’re already attracting them, whether it be through emails and our own channels; They’re already discovering the new Pandora,” Jarvis said. “It was a fantastic metric to actually see that there was such a high number of new customers coming through and were actually responding and buying the product.” 

Pandora Is More Than Just Charms

For the past few years, the Pandora marketing team has worked to change the perception of its brand to a full jewelry house, with new brand aesthetics, compared with only selling charm bracelets, Jarvis said.  

“It is a barrier that we have been overcoming and we’re definitely, along with our media, showcasing Pandora as a full jewelry house,” Jarvis said. “That has been the crux of our marketing campaigns over the past two years, and it is definitely performing as such.” 

About 40% of its business is from charms, Jarvis said, which it has been able to maintain while sales in other collections have increased, such as its lab-grown diamonds, he said. It also helps that charms are becoming trendy again, and Pandora’s authority in that space helps. 

The Pop-Up Experience

It took about two months for Gladiator to build the actual pop-up, which is on the longer side of construction periods, Dolan said. It spent time recreating an enlarged piece of Pandora jewelry with three of the talismen, which was all done by hand.  

Inside the store, Pandora and Gladiator designed it to have experiential elements, such as a quiz for shoppers to determine the right talisman for them, and do styling with other charms at a “play table.” It also had on-site engraving for free at the pop-up. While its talisman pieces cannot be engraved, other items it sold there could be. This helped to boost average order value as well, if shoppers wanted to buy a talisman and product that they could engrave.  

Dolan said the cost of these activation ranges, with elaborate ones costing more than $1 million. For Pandora, the cost of running the pop-up was on-par with its other pop-ups and experiential activations, Jarvis said. Although, this was the first one that was a month long. Pandora decided to have a longer timeframe to further increase awareness for its brand and this specific collection, as it is a key focus for Q3 and Q4, he said.  

“We wanted to make sure that we were really giving enough time to actually target those consumers just to grow some awareness of this as we head into the holiday season,” Jarvis said. 

Launch Party For Brand Exposure

A pop-up at the Grove was also a good opportunity as it is a shopping destination for both locals and tourists.  

“We also chose it because The Grove is one of the higher affinity shopping locations and destinations within the LA area, and it both has that balance between a new customer as well as a current customer who would already like Pandora,” Jarvis said.

Another way Pandora is working to change its perception and acquire new and younger customers is through influencer marketing. For example, music group Katseye is a brand ambassador for Pandora, who was at the invite-only party the night before the pop-up opened.  

“A lot of people, especially the younger demographic, they’re heavily influenced with who’s of the moment,” Jarvis said. “Having an ambassador like Katseye really launched the The Grove pop-up, it’s such an important piece of the pie for us. That really gets a lot of traction when it comes to people talking about the brand because it’s a credentialing model for us. If a cool ambassador or a cool publication is writing about us, it just opens the doors for a lot of young women to be able to see the brand in a new light because an authority that they trust and that they love is writing nice things about us and really kind of showcasing the efforts that doing.”