Seven Dials launches pop-up incubator for brands

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 29, 2020

London’s Seven Dials area has launched an initiative designed to help start-ups but also to boost the mix of appealing brands in the neighbourhood as it fights back in the battle to attract visitors post-lockdown.

Start-Up with Seven Dials is described as “the ultimate business incubator pop-up space” in the heart of London’s West End.

It includes a wide variety of retail brands, including fashion, lifestyle, fitness and homewares, that were “born from the ‘kitchen table’ during lockdown”.

It’s being driven by landlord Shaftesbury, which owns a swathe of properties in Seven Dials as well as the wider Covent Garden and Carnaby areas.

It said that “while the Covid-19 lockdown has seen much uncertainty, one in 10 small businesses have launched new products or expanded their services from home. To celebrate and support budding UK businesses that have responded to adversity with enterprise, Shaftesbury is now exclusively offering start-ups the chance to secure a physical incubator space in Seven Dials and join the destination’s diverse roster of independent brands”.

The initiative has officially launched via the Seven Dials website and will be open for entries for a two-week period. A panel of industry experts “will come together to judge all the entrants for this unique bricks-and-mortar retail opportunity,” the landlord said.

The chosen brands will this autumn “receive the support from Shaftesbury and Seven Dials to set up and launch their brand for the first time in the iconic West-End village. In the provided pop-up space, the brand will sit alongside a host of Seven Dials’ independent, designer and entrepreneurial brands such as Farah, Diesel, Coco De Mer and Tatty Devine, all of whom have opened flagships in Seven Dials”.

Seven Dials also recently implemented timed road closures until the end of the year in the area in partnership with Camden Council, between 10am-6pm, seven days a week, to ensure safe social distancing.