Pop-Up Stores Find Short-Term Rentals With Storefront Website Euphorie Cosmetics has materialized at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York. Storefront, a specialist in pop-up rentals, was the go-between. When Kanye West brought his Yeezus tour to New York last month, he needed somewhere to sell his merchandise. Instead of a concert booth, he opened a pop-up shop at 355 Bowery and sold $35 snapback hats and $20 tote bags. Four days later, when the tour blew out of town, the store was quickly emptied, but not before a generating a flurry of breathless coverage. "Get your Yeezus gear here right next to the likes of Dev Hynes and Aziz Ansari, who were both able to stop by," wrote Refinery29, the website. Lost in the hype was how the store came together. Instead of a traditional real estate agent, Mr. West's team turned to Storefront, an online start-up that connects store owners and landlords with retail spaces they wish to rent out for short terms with artists, brands and boutiques in need of temporary quarters. With a few clicks, Mr. West's team was able to book the space for $1,550 a day. Started in March, Storefront currently lists about 300 spaces in San Francisco, where the company has its headquarters, and 200 spaces in New York, to which it expanded in June. The current inventory includes an 80-square-foot kiosk at the 50th Street subway station along the No. 1 line, and several stores at the Roger Smith Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. "We're like the Airbnb of retail," said Tristan Pollock, 27, who started the service with Erik Eliason, also 27. He was referring to the popular website that lets homeowners and apartment dwellers rent their homes directly to guests. They didn't invent renting out rooms, they just made it much easier. We didn't invent pop-ups. We're just making it easier to do them. The two founders, who live in San Francisco, got the idea after seeing lots of empty storefronts in their hometown Minneapolis. "One in 10 stores in the U.S. is vacant," Mr. Pollock said. We thought we could build some efficiency in there. The hope is that Storefront can "disrupt" the retail real estate market in much the same way that Airbnb and other so-called sharing-economy start-ups have disrupted older industries. "It's like Airbnb, eBay and Uber rolled into one," said David Bell, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Storefront matches excess capacity with the demand for capacity in an efficient and scalable way. The Storefront website looks uncannily similar to Airbnb, with each listing accompanied by photos, homey descriptions, customer reviews and a calendar showing available dates and rates. Storefront, which charges renters a commission of 6 to 12 percent, also provides general liability insurance. Listers are a diverse group. There are landlords looking to make money between, or instead of, long-term leases. "With so many zoning changes and buildings slated to be demolished, many landlords aren't looking for long-term leases," said Melissa Gonzalez, the founder of the Lion'esque Group, a pop-up store specialist who is on the advisory board of Storefront. There are store owners with extra shelves to fill, and some who decide that it is more profitable to sublet their spaces than to continue with their own stores. There are also nightclub owners looking for revenue during the day, and coffee shops with spare nooks. Besides Mr. West, short-term renters have included tech-savvy start-ups that want more flexibility and less overhead than what traditional leases offer. "They're the people who rent their apartments on Airbnb, sell their art on Etsy and get their food delivered by Postmate," Mr. Pollock said. Touch-and-go tenants also include online stores like Indochino, Storenvy and Hatch, which are exploring the world of brick and mortar. "For the last 10 years, brands have been focusing on how to make their online experience like their offline experience," Mr. Pollock said. Now they're trying to figure out the opposite.