Funky Monkey toys pop up in Americana mall

Stanley Greenman is bringing some funk to Americana Manhasset this holiday season.

He's opened a pop-up version of his Funky Monkey toy store across from the upscale mall's Chanel boutique. He's hoping the temporary digs draw lots of holiday shoppers.

The original Funky Monkey toy store opened in 2004, about four years after Greenman sold his Noodle Kidoodle Inc. national chain of 59 toy stores to Zany Brainy Inc. for $35 million. The shop, in the Wheatley Plaza shopping center in Greenvale, specializes in what he calls a "well-edited" collection of unique and interesting toys.

After being retired for three or four years, Greenman, 60, says he got back into the toy business because "it got pretty boring. Golf became like work. I needed a new project, a new challenge."

His merchandising strategy is to order small quantities of potentially hot toys to test demand. Now he's using the pop-up store at the mall to test demand for a new location.

"This is more of a regional shopping experience," he says of the Americana, even though it's only three miles away from his Greenvale location. "People come from a much wider area and travel a lot farther."

Pop-up concept growing
Pop-up stores -- which have short-term leases, for a few days or a few months -- have become increasingly widespread since Target introduced the term with its Isaac Mizrahi collection in 2003, says Christina Norsig, a marketing expert and author of "Pop-Up Retail: How You Can Master This Global Marketing Phenomenon."

She says growth has surged since 2009, especially among Halloween and holiday-season stores, with 15 percent more pop-up shops in 2011 than in 2010. Helping the trend along, she adds, is a national retail vacancy rate of 13 percent.

A vacancy accounted for the origin of the Funky Monkey pop-up: After a lingerie store's lease expired, the Americana found itself with a few months of down time before a new tenant, Max Mara women's fashions, moves in next spring, says Deirdre Costa Major, president of Castagna Realty Retail Group. Castagna owns both the Americana and Wheatley Plaza.

Major says the Americana reached out to Funky Monkey about trying a pop-up in the vacant shop. Once Greenman agreed, it took him 10 days to open the new store, he says.

The pop-up space is less than a third of that of the Greenvale location, Major says. But Greenman spent in the "four digits" to ensure the pop-up stayed true to the Funky Monkey brand: It's painted in Funky Monkey's signature colors of orange and yellow on the ceiling and green on the walls. He added a counter with space for gift-wrapping, which he considers a key service. And he's rotating employees between the two stores, to maintain the same level of customer service, although he did add two salespeople to ensure enough coverage.

Holiday splurges
As for merchandise, because the Greenvale store was already well-stocked for the holiday season, Greenman was able to transfer toys to fill the pop-up store. But the pop-up focuses more on big-ticket items -- the sorts of things buyers want for the holidays. Two of his hottest items are the $100 LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer Tablet, a computer built for young children, and the $59 Fijit Friends, a robot that responds to voice commands by dancing and telling jokes.

The higher price points mean the pop-up can maximize its dollars per square foot, Greenman says.

He says he's not yet sure what he'll do after the pop-up closes in early January. If it's a hit, he may consider opening a permanent store at the Americana, or even opening several holiday pop-ups at other locations next year.

"We wanted to see how it would work," he says. "Right after the first of the year, we'll analyze the situation and be in a better position to tell if the concept is successful."