Jennifer Ortakales Dawkins/Insider
Brands that sell directly to customers online are entering brick-and-mortar spaces.
In some cases, it s less about making sales and more about building brand awareness.
Mall stores could prove to be big business for small brands.
The model that once set buzzy upstart brands apart selling direct-to-consumer online and on social media is no longer enough. As ecommerce is growing, it s become harder to stand out on Instagram or Facebook among thousands of other brands.
That s where a new model of department store and mall pop-ups like Brik + Clik and Platform come in. They lease or buy the real estate then rent temporary, affordable spaces to small businesses. In return, the small business effectively gets a billboard inside a high-traffic shopping center.
Johnson could easily, perhaps, make a living out of such bucolic scenes but he has also tackled the more complex subject matter of cityscapes. In Pine and Grant (2019-21), the artist has started out depicting, in a realistic manner, a very specific location in San Francisco. It is probably possible to identify the various buildings, because of their architectural features. But this realism is obscured by large square, rectangle and oblong shapes of secondary colors superimposed upon the city backdrop. It is a conscious effort on the artist s part to merge aspects of representation and abstraction in one canvas. This may not be everyone s notion of a San Francisco city scene.