According to the message on their site, Pop The Bubble is all about beautiful things. They are an online shop of lifestyle products. They recently had an offline experience at Topshop in London. I talked to founder Dina Horta about the company, their recent activity, the future, and the Portuguese startup scene.
In a nutshell, what is Pop the Bubble and how did the idea come about?
Pop the Bubble is an online shopping destination for lifestyle accessories. We are all about beautiful things. We love to travel the world and discover the coolest new brands and products, and bring them together in one platform that combines shopping and content.
Pop the Bubble is about sharing: we encourage and celebrate uniqueness and think that all of us should express ourselves in an authentic way through fashion, lifestyle, design, and culture. What we use in our everyday life should unequivocally convey our style and vision.
We are absolutely focused on a curatorial work inspired by what women want. We want to connect with stylist gals out there and create a cool new lifestyle, full of creativity and trendy, beautiful things.
The Pop the Bubble concept idea came up after some trips, where I discovered cool brands and products that weren’t available in Europe or Portugal and that I thought people would love.
How did the Pop Up Shop experience in London’s Topshop go?
It was a great experience! Topshop is a whole different world – the logistic, the store backstage, everything was a great experience for us and allowed us to grow. Beside this, it was great to know a little bit more about the UK market.
Are the offline initiatives going to continue in 2018?
Yes, we plan to open more pop up shops in the next few years.
What are your growth plans?
In the last years we sold for all over the world, but we focused on growth and in consolidating the Portuguese market. Now we want to do this in a new market – Spain. The major focus is the grow this new market, especially in terms of marketing, to bring more awareness to the brand and to cultivate a relationship with the Spanish audience.
How do you see the Portuguese startup scene?
In the last few years Portugal grew a lot in entrepreneurship. People have lost the fear of taking risks and the ecosystem started growing. Institutions like Startup Lisboa make a huge difference in the startup scene, they help us grow, promote the interaction between startups, help us with mentors and VCs and support us, and this is very important because it allowed us to grow in a sustainable way.
It’s great to observe this dynamic. It show us that we are very creative. We are making the most of this moment that Portugal is living in terms of international buzz.
What do you wish you’d have known when you first started?
This is a tricky question! I wish I knew everything, from logistic questions to planning issues, but all the questions and barriers that I’ve been facing made me grow and everything I learned in the past few years is priceless. Facing the unknown is, in my opinion, one of the best things of entrepreneurship. This is what makes our hearts beat fast, and I love this feeling!
One of the things that I think is crucial to understand is that when you start a business you to have to be aware that it will be tough. You need to be strong, positive, calm and, most of all, resilient. The life of an entrepreneur is full of ups and downs and resilience is definitely very important to the growth of the business.
More about Pop the Bubble at https://popthebubblestore.com/
Photo: © Infofranchising
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