Liberty branches out into pop-up shops

Liberty, the designer department store famous for its mock-Tudor façade on London's Regent Street, is searching for locations for pop-up shops across the UK.

The store, which stocks upmarket brands from Alexander McQueen to Helmut Lang, will open the stores for just a few months in time for the Christmas shopping period.

It has hired property agent Jones Lang LaSalle to look for shops between 2,000 to 3,000 square feet to open in the autumn. Areas being considered include Cambridge, Bath, Chester and Edinburgh, the Kent shopping centre Bluewater and Oxfordshire's Bicester outlet village, as well as London.

The pop-up shop plan is the department store's second foray into opening shops separately from its flagship department store.

In 2008 it opened a store on Sloane Street. But sales were poor and it closed the following year.

Since then the business, founded in 1875, has been bought by private-equity firm BlueGem Capital, set up by a group of former Merrill Lynch bankers.