Kanye West: Retail Visionary And Mobile Payments Leader?

There is likely no one on Earth more convinced of Kanye West’s status as a visionary than Kanye West. The rapper, fashion designer, music producer and Kardashian husband is nothing if not self-assured.

“My role models are artists, merchants. There’s less than 10 that I can name in history. Truman. Ford. Hughes. Disney. Jobs. West,” Kanye told the world last night during his four-minute monologue at the MTV VMAs. It was a bold claim, to be certain, but probably didn’t top last year’s announcement that he was running for president.

Because Kanye is, well, Kanye, it is easy enough to roll one’s eye at the sentiment. The same monologue included a brief dissection of the creative brilliance of one of his recent videos, a shoutout to his girl Taylor Swift and inveighing against violence endemic in inner cities. Whatever one’s opinion of his prowess, you can likely at least appreciate the breadth of Yeezy’s range.

And it is notable perhaps that, when Kanye calls out his biggest influences and the big footprints he chose to tread in, he calls out merchants, as well as artists, because much of the Kanye vision is beyond music and falls squarely and simply into commerce. As we reported, just prior to his MTV appearance, Kanye retail was suddenly everywhere — through a giant simultaneous launch of pop-up stores.

Those stores have gotten a lot of attention, and the details of whose buying and how they are paying have some serious minds wondering if Kanye West, behind the bluster, might be a little bit right. He might just possibly be giving the world a preview of the future of retail and payments.

No, we aren’t kidding.

The Kanye Shop

While he will likely never quite be the marketing mastermind his wife is — and that’s not an insult, there is possibly no one better at selling herself on Earth than Kim Kardashian-West — the pop-up explosion that recently rang off around the world is at least an indication he’s learned some key lessons: go big, go broad and make it just exclusive enough that the target audience is left wanting much, much more at the end.

For three days starting on Aug. 21, Kanye shops were open for business worldwide in in cities like Singapore, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Atlanta, Chicago and Las Vegas.

The items on offer? T-shirts, hoodies, denim jackets and other Kanye-styled items emblazoned with the name of the city where the temporary stores were located or something having to do with the word “Pablo.” Like most clothes by Kanye, writing is in Gothic font by the artist Cali Thornhill.

This was not Kanye’s first pop-up shop rodeo. In 2013, during his Yeezus tour, he opened a pop-up location on the Bowery that led to packed lines and many of the Kanye-styled apparel items selling out in hours.

This time around, the story was similar. At the Melbourne Kanye pop-up store, the line stretched around the block. At the Sydney store, only three customers were allowed inside the store at one time, and there was a limit on the number of items each customer could purchase.

And when customers come to shop Kanye, they come to spend. West’s pop-up store on Wooster Street in New York City that opened in March reportedly brought in $1 million in sales in a three-day period.

And more notable than the fact that customers came is how they paid.

Kanye’s Highly Mobile Shopping Base

“Want to know what’s coming up in mobile payments? Look no further than Yeezy.”

That terrifying thought comes care of Mashable.

And yet, when one drills down a bit into the commercial activity of those 21 pop-up shops around the world, an interesting trend emerges. This is one mobile, tied-in group.

According to figures released by Square following the great Kanyemmerce (we’re sorry) event, Yeezy fans are mobile enthusiasts and proto-pack leaders. On average, 7 percent of transactions at the Pablo shops worldwide were through contactless payments. That blows away the U.S. industry average, which is about 1 percent. And those percentages varied quite a bit by city. San Francisco was an unsurprising pack leader, with 28 percent of payments coming in contactless. But other U.S. cities were also beating the average by a notable margin. Dallas and Houston tied for second with 14 percent contactless use, while Miami clocked in at 8 percent.

Is it enough to put Kanye on the list with Henry Ford, Walt Disney and Steve Jobs?

Well, Kanye didn’t invent the pop-up shop, though he was a very early adopter of the model. And though his users are way into mobile payments, it isn’t clear it is because Kanye West is leading them there. Perhaps, if he had actually rolled out KanPay, it might be fair to call him the future of mobile payments.

But Mashable’s excitability to the side, Kanye does have an undeniable ability to feel the ways the consumer winds are blowing and to make sure his sails are pointed accordingly. If Kanye’s users are going mobile — and in big numbers — that is well worth watching, since Kanye fans might just be able to tell us all a lot about what’s next in retail.