Tea Party

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the launch of its canned iced tea, Arizona Beverage Company opened a pop-up shop in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, selling 99-cent drinks and creating brand buzz. For five days, the temporary shop featured merchandise, an indoor Koi pond, and tattoo artists on deck to provide diehard iced tea fans with free ink.

Mirrorball, a New York City-based marketing and experience design agency, managed all elements of the project and called upon Vectra Visual to help transform a vacant storefront into a retail outlet. The space was awash in Arizona Iced Tea’s well-known southwestern, checkerboard, and cherry blossom patterns that appear on product cans and bottles.

Vectra Visual, which operates in three locations throughout the US and is the retail signage division of Taylor Communications, had just two days to produce the graphics for the job and another two days for four workers to install. Phil Paradise, director of visual solutions for the New York location, says Vectra’s retail and event expertise gives them the know-how to create quick-turnaround pop-up shops like the one for Arizona.  

“This is everything that would go into a retail store – all compiled into a couple of days,” Paradise says. 

Vectra used its HP Latex 3500 machine to print on 5000 square feet of 3M Scotchcal IJ35, 3M Controltac IJ180 adhesive vinyl, and 2000 square feet of Ultraflex UltraPoplin PES S240 fabric. The company used its EFI Vutek GS3250LX Pro and HS100 Pro to image onto 4000 square feet of G-Floor polyvinyl flooring to handle the crowds of people that visited the shop. Cutting for the project was completed on a Zünd G3 3200.

For interior signage throughout the shop, Paradise says he elected to use PlyVeneer BioBoard because it’s a recyclable product. “One of my goals in this process is to leave the least amount of waste as possible,” Paradise adds. That objective also drives his frequent choice of printed fabric that was used to decorate the walls throughout the shop. Fabric was installed with SEG frames and Keder Solutions, which attaches the material to the ceiling using a tent-style cable system and helps the graphics to have a seamless appearance when used with high ceilings like those in the pop-up shop.