Ross Bailey


Ross Bailey is an entrepreneur and the CEO & Founder of Appear Here, an online marketplace for short-term retail space.
Considered a commercial real estate disruptor, Bailey has been featured in publications including The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, GQ, Property Week, Monocle, Wired and TechCrunch.
Bailey was named one of Forbes Europe's 30 Under 30 in 2016 and one of Financial Times’ Top 10 under 30 tech entrepreneurs. In 2018, he was listed in Fast Company's 100 most creative people. He is a regular speaker at conferences regarding retail, e-commerce and technology.

Early life

Bailey was born in London and completed his education at the School Of Communication Arts 2.0. He started his entrepreneurial journey at age 16 when he attended the Peter Jones Enterprise Academy run by Peter Jones.
Determined to launch his own business, Bailey tested his ideas by launching a string of successful pop-up shops in destinations across London, including the Rock & Rule pop up for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. From this experience, his vision for Appear Here was born.

Career

Businesses

In 2013, Bailey founded Appear Here. Based on the concept that renting commercial property should be as easy as booking a hotel room. The company has since been hailed as the "Airbnb for retail" by Monocle and a "Digital game changer for the high street" by The Guardian.
Appear Here's mission is to "make vacant shop space accessible to anyone with an idea” and “to widen the pool of tenants". Appear Here has seen over "180,000" brands and entrepreneurs using the platform from first time entrepreneurs to major brands and retailers including Net-a-Porter, Chanel, Apple, Amazon, Supreme, the BBC, Nike, Inc., Kanye West, Coca-Cola, Spotify and Netflix. The platform lets "entrepreneurs trial their ideas", rather than take out long term leases, “seeing rent as a variable cost".
Appear Here has raised a total of $21.4 million in venture capital funding from the previous backers of Farfetch, and Glossier, and have recently announced a strategic partnership with Fifth Wall Ventures. The company is also backed by Net-a-Porter's Natalie Massenet.
Appear Here has launched offices in London, Paris and New York, and plan to expand further into the US and Europe. In London alone Appear Here launched 4,500 shops in 2018 and experienced 296% growth in demand for its spaces in the UK.
In 2019, The Times reported that Bailey and Appear Here were now considering further expansion, seeking to "take on leases for entire department stores" and "capitalising on the struggles of traditional department stores on both sides of the Atlantic".