This iconic little Canberra store is going national

Two years ago, the colourful boutique store on Braddon’s main road was staring down the barrel of insolvency.

But now POP Canberra is plotting national domination.

Established in 2020, the store on Lonsdale Street offers an outlet for hundreds of local small-scale producers of art, jewellery, homewards, gifts, food, alcohol and all manner of other unique items.

It’s had a couple of rebrands over the years, including in 2023, after it racked up $1 million in debt and entered voluntary administration due to what founder Gabe Trew described as “legacy problems” from the COVID lockdowns.

Fortunately, creditors voted to accept regular percentage payments and keep the store alive.

POP responded by launching its own national smartphone shopping app, with over 1000 products listed within months.

But the latest rebrand, with its cartoonish-style font and cloud-shaped smiley face logo, is a sign of even bigger things, according to Gabe.

“We’ll be opening our first shop in Melbourne in early 2026,” he says.

Yep, Gabe and his team have spent the past few months sussing out several locations around Clifton Hill near the Victorian capital’s CBD, looking for something “double the floorplan” of Canberra.

“We’re working with someone up there to try and find the exact right spot because, yeah, we’re going to make it much bigger than the Canberra shop,” he says.

And that’s not all.

“We’ll follow Melbourne with three more – in Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart.”

As with the original store, each one will support local makers from within those cities, from “cool established brands to locals who live in those places and might have a bit of a side hustle and want an avenue to get a little bit more known about”.

Gabe already has plenty of these contacts all over Australia from interactions he’s had since launching online shopping.

“That’s how the idea was born – we’ve had makers in different cities asking us to come and open up a store,” he says.

“And we had so many in Melbourne that got us thinking that Melbourne was the place to open our next shop. And I think it just really fits the vibe – Melbourne’s really good at supporting local talent.”

Gabe says the app has been replaced by an online shopping function on the POP website, which allows anyone in the country to buy what’s on offer in the Canberra store.

The app will return once the other stores come online to allow customers to buy from other stores and enable makers outside the major capital cities to list their products.

“The idea is we’ll be able to tap into all these regional makers and allow people in the city to discover items in the regions they might not be able to get to,” Gabe says.

“We’re just trying to reach more locals at a national level and support people everywhere, basically.”

He says the goal is to open POP Melbourne in early 2026, but sneaking in a pre-Christmas 2025 opening “would be great”.

“It just goes to show that if you hit the hard times and have a great community around you, you can come out stronger than ever before,” he adds.

“It’s quite a heart-warming story in the end.”

Not a fan of online shopping? Visit POP at 27 Lonsdale St, Braddon.