On why pop-ups make sense and independent VM budgets are need of the hour

Retail4Growth connected with Sanjana Sud Bhavsar, Founder & Creative Director of Abraxas Design, to understand why VM in India is still fighting budget battles, why sustainability hasn’t yet entered the VM brief, and how pop-ups are reshaping retail experiences. 

Over the past decade, the retail landscape in India has been undergoing a fundamental shift. What was once defined purely by products on shelves is now being reimagined as immersive spaces where customers engage with a brand’s culture rather than just its merchandise. From in-store cafes at showrooms to multi-brand experiential hubs showcasing digital-first labels, retailers are rethinking physical spaces to drive deeper connections.

Retail4Growth connected with Sanjana Sud Bhavsar, Founder and Creative Director of Abraxas Design, to understand how visual merchandising is evolving from traditional window displays into experiences that blend aesthetics and culture. She offers candid insights on the rise of pop-ups, the challenges of limited VM budgets, and why sustainability is yet to become a serious conversation in Indian retail.

The rise of pop-ups

Sanjana highlights the growing wave of pop-up formats and multi-brand offline stores like Broadway and Mink. These platforms bridge the gap for digital-first brands born during COVID, offering them a low-capex offline presence. At Mink, for instance, many artisanal, homegrown, and handcrafted brands come together under one roof, making discovery seamless for customers.

According to Sanjana, this model is not just commercially smart but also culturally significant, as it pushes Indian labels into mainstream retail and taps into customers’ curiosity for variety and craftsmanship.

Budget is the perennial challenge for VM

On VM as a whole, despite its importance, Sanjana acknowledges that budgets remain thin. Even luxury labels, with products priced in lakhs, allocate limited funds for VM. “As a VM, you feel like you should design the world for them, but the reality is you have to play within constraints,” she explains.

She observes that while brands dedicate big spends on events and marketing campaigns, VM often gets slotted as an afterthought. The lack of standalone VM budgets means innovation is stifled unless leadership consciously prioritises it.

Tech adoption depends on who shops

Sanjana notes that technology integration in stores mirrors on the profile of shoppers/customers that the retail brand caters to and much of the technology use for communication depends on the product and its customers. “Some customers are quality-conscious and comfortable paying a premium price for an advanced feature. “If someone is spending several thousand rupees on a jumper, they understand what nanotechnology or UV protection means,” she explains. By extension, this also means that the same customers might be comfortable using a tech-driven interface as part of their in-store experience.

However, brands targeting families and children often emphasise playful, tactile experiences over technology to build emotional engagement through touch and interaction rather than digital layers. But then it will also depend on how well the tech interface is designed – whether it enhances the human engagement or lessens it.

Sustainability is still a blind spot

Sustainability is another important aspect of VM. But while sustainability is an increasingly important talking point across business eco-systems, an end to end sustainable approach comes with its own challenges, especially in retail. As Sanjana shares, in the context of sustainability in VM, “I don’t think sustainability guidelines have kicked into VM yet.” Unlike retail interiors, where reclaimed materials are slowly making inroads, VM still relies heavily on low-cost, disposable materials like MDF, paint, and vinyl, as she points out. With cheap labour and raw material abundantly available in India, brands prioritise novelty and frequency over durability or reuse. Until sustainability becomes part of the brief from corporates, VM will likely remain stuck in its current material ecosystem. All the stakeholders in the ecosystem will perhaps have to come together to make sustainable alternatives viable.