May 22, 2012

Open House or Pop-up Shop? In Highland Park, it’s BothBy Alexandria Abramian-MottLATimesBlogs.LATimes.com

Highland Park, CA – There’s thinking outside the box, but what about selling outside the shop? Sarah Brady and Alex Cole’s Highland Park home decor store, Platform, is turning the art of staging homes for sale into a shopping experience: The open house is a pop-up store.

Platform, known for mostly locally handmade house wares, attracts what Brady calls “a pretty decent stream of customers.” But Brady, a former trend forecaster, says she was looking to sell the store’s linens, tablewares, decorative accessories and artwork beyond the perimeters of the 900-square-foot shop. Opportunity came calling in the unexpected form of the neighborhood’s home flippers.

“Highland Park is one of the areas where flipping has continued, and one day, one of them asked us if we would stage a home that she was looking to sell,” Brady says.

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