Tulsa Pop-Up Downtown Program Returns To Support Local Small Businesses

Tulsa's Pop-Up Downtown program is back, giving businesses the chance to test their concepts and reach new customers in a brick-and-mortar building.

Pop-Up Downtown aims to expand the presence of diverse small businesses downtown and help reduce commercial vacancies.

The people behind the Pop-Up program know that starting and operating a business can be difficult. That's why Emily Scott, Downtown Tulsa Partnership's Director of Planning and Economic Development, said this program tries to make the process easier for businesses looking to grow.

Pop-Up Downtown looks to lower some of the barriers to starting a brick-and-mortar business by providing a space for businesses and a temporary lease to get them started.

"What the program seeks to do is eliminate some of those barriers to make it easier and a little more comfortable for small businesses that do the really hard work of actually operating our small businesses. So, we have them with a short-term 90-day lease. We also provide business development consulting, marketing support, and just try to promote them as much as possible while they are in their space," Scott said.

Pop-Up Downtown has given businesses like LAMIK Beauty the chance to establish themselves in the downtown area after going through a test run in a brick-and-mortar building.

Kim Roxie, the owner of LAMIK Beauty, said she went through the Pop-Up program back in November. She said having an actual space instead of only doing direct-to-consumer live shows on social media to showcase her products opened up many doors for her, including the chance to experience customers in Tulsa.

Roxie recommends businesses apply because she said this program allows you to experiment in ways you might not be able to do otherwise.

"You can experiment. You can discover, and what I love about it too is you got a grant to actually help fix up the space. So you also got some sort of startup cost, some startup funding so you can make sure that even the layout of your store was something that you would like to do and see how that worked, see how it moved," Roxie said.

Applications for the Pop-Up Downtown program are live and will close on September 27th. There will also be a virtual information session on September 10th.

For more information or to apply, you can visit the Pop-Up Downtown website.