Text丨Shao Si, Producer丨Retail Krypton Planet (ID: LS-KXQ).
On the second floor of Beijing's Wangfujing Joy Shopping Mall, a "Qingsong Supermarket" opened in early 2024, and its owner, Zhang Xiaoyin, told Retail Krypton Planet that "Qingsong" is a homonym for "relaxed" and represents an attitude to life.
Different from supermarkets that usually sell fresh food and daily necessities, "Qingsong Supermarket" is actually an exploratory lifestyle collection store, providing a "stronghold" of trendy lifestyles, with more than 500 square meters and selling more than 1,200 kinds of outdoor, cycling and interesting cultural and creative related goods.
A corner of "Qingsong Supermarket" Picture: Little Red Book.
The whole store has five sections: retro cycling, camping outdoor, clothing and groceries, ** vinyl and coffee drinks, and gathers several local brands in Beijing, such as lazy convenience store, super plant company, container, Mack Records, Ninigogo Studio and James Outdoorlife.
Previously, these owner brands were scattered on a street corner or alley in Beijing, and "Qingsong Supermarket" linked these brands to open stores together, forming a relatively fixed "interest" market, which was displayed to young consumers in Beijing and even the whole country in Wangfujing.
Cycling, outdoor and vinyl records, as well as some products that bring a small surprise or sense of value to life, are both cost-effective basics and selected quality goods. Holding together, multi-format integration and multi-category aggregation can cover more circle of people. "Qingsong Supermarket" is trying to explore a new way of living in a trendy lifestyle.
Unlike brands such as MUJI and IKEA that offer a distinct lifestyle and aesthetic style through items such as clothing, home furnishings, and groceries, "Sunny Pine Supermarket" focuses more on specific interests and hobbies, providing them with segmented products and services to satisfy.
Pictured: Retail Krypton Planet.
Retro cycling, outdoor camping, vinyl**, doll figures, handbooks. These niche hobbies and sub-categories are the new embodiment of some consumers' pursuit of personalized lifestyles, and naturally a kind of business or "interest economy" that some researchers call "small interest business" has emerged.
Consumers can find happiness, fun and social currency in these niche, individuality and even fashionable love and pursuit. From a business perspective, it means new opportunities and new business.
Small interest: Breakthrough point of business innovation
Why did you make "Sunny Pine Supermarket"? In Zhang Xiaoyin's view, it comes from the experience of the market and a certain opportunity.
In recent years, shopping malls and new commercial entities have gradually become more receptive to trends and lifestyle formats, "In many commercial space scenarios, the things that communicate with users are too cold, or too emotional. ”
Pictured: Retail Krypton Planet.
The development logic of traditional offline brick-and-mortar commerce is being adjusted, and some emerging business entities are beginning to explore new directions, trying to do younger positioning and adding new content, hoping to gather young and more accurate passenger flows, and become a destination for specific groups of people such as deeper circles, IP and community lifestyles.
Opened at the end of 2023, it will introduce more than 160 trendy brands, covering a variety of formats such as fashion retail, catering, service experience, leisure and entertainment.
This is exactly the momentum that the "Sunny Pine Supermarket" is seeing, and the trend is expanding from clothing, catering and home grocers to specific hobbies and "small interests", becoming a breakthrough point for business innovation.
Picture: RE and Yi***
Founded in 2017, RE is a typical new commercial species that starts from the depth of "interest" and takes bicycles as the main line. After several years of development, the retailer founded by Japanese architect Shiro Sugane has opened 12 directly operated stores in the Chinese market.
The innovation of RE is not limited to selling its own high-end bicycle products, but driving the iteration of products and services with "riding interest", and has become a lifestyle brand.
On the one hand, we sell bicycles and online multi-category cycling equipment, and have our own research and development of bicycles, cycling clothing, casual clothing and peripheral derivatives for professional riders and modification enthusiasts.
On the other hand, RE is also subdivided into a number of community clubs according to age, physical strength, and interests, and organizes a variety of professional or experiential and exploration-based urban cycling to enhance the participation of enthusiasts.
Figure: RE Mini Program.
RE's sectors include: bicycle collection store, bicycle station, bicycle canteen, bicycle city travel guide e-publication and cycling club. It not only provides a cultural sharing platform, but also mixes and matches bicycle shops, bars, cafes and restaurants, and holds social activities such as art exhibitions, salons, and meals from time to time, forming a deep companionship community with the theme of cycling.
After discovering the scarcity of domestic equipment brands and new products, in 2018, Li Xuan founded James OutdoorLife in Beijing, the first outdoor appliance with unique cultural genes at home and abroad.
Initially, James OutdoorLife started as an online store, and then opened a physical store in Shunyi, trying to let consumers who love the outdoors enter a new world of "small interests" from experiencing and understanding brands and customs around the world through a store that hangs out and experiences on a weekend, or a 'amusement park' and 'toy space' with the value of public space.
Pictured: Retail Krypton Planet.
Focusing on the topic of "the path form of small interest business", two years ago, Wu Bofan, the founder of Bofan Time, Li Xiang, a financial writer, and Wu Sheng, the founder of Scene Lab, had a conceptual dialogue. In Wu Bofan's view, small interest business is actually a kind of "peach blossom source economy", "at the beginning it is extremely narrow, only to understand people, repeat dozens of steps, and suddenly open up".
For many "interested" brands, it may be just a small hole "as if there is light" at first, and then, suddenly, it will open up. In the business world, such examples from niche to mainstream are not uncommon. In 1966, vans, which started as skateboarding shoes in California, conquered a group of "unprofessional" skateboarders with their original "waffle" rubber soles, and eventually became a global brand in a niche world.
In 1998, yoga became popular in Europe and the United States, and the founder of lululemon, Dennis JWilson sniffed an opportunity as a new trend movement and used a pair of yoga pants to prop up a middle-class female harvester ...... that is now worth tens of billions of dollars
Biking, outdoor camping, vinyl ......These current trendy hobbies pursued by niche groups have been expanded by some entrepreneurs from selling "small interest" products to providing three-dimensional new lifestyle experiences, and leveraging breakthroughs in business innovation from the deep link and companionship of users.
In February, Ma Yu, founder of creative communications agency Massnote, gave a speech in Beijing. He believes that ordinary people can use new tools and new methods to find new opportunities in the "interest economy", inspire them with love, and work hard to become craftsmen in the fields they are interested in, so that they may get more opportunities and resources.
"Small Interest Business": On the way to explore
Valuing the long-term value of physical stores, Zhang Xiaoyin took advantage of the start of the trend business and initiated the launch of "Qingsong Supermarket", but how to be a sustainable and good format, the managers are still standing at the starting line of exploration.
From the perspective of specific practice, there are actually many difficulties in the "Peach Blossom Source Economy" focusing on the needs of niche circles and advancing to sustainable commercial realization.
With the vertical, focused, and personalized characteristics of interest circles, it is difficult for "interest" consumers to form a large-scale in the early stage, and they need to accumulate and operate in depth with users.
According to an industry observer, "interest consumption is rapidly iterative. Affected by the comprehensive influence of various factors, consumer goods will continue to evolve, update, develop and upgrade on the original basis, shorten the product life cycle, and accelerate consumption iteration. ”
After the epidemic and then a few years after the epidemic, Zhang Xiaoyin has gained a characteristic of this business from the toss and attempts of various formats and markets: it is not a rigid need, it fluctuates greatly due to the general environment, and the specific landing of the business needs to be constantly adjusted. A store manager in Shanghai agrees, "After the epidemic, people's travel choices have become more and more popular, and the popularity has weakened significantly." ”
On the one hand, it is necessary to fine-tune the product and brand mix according to customer needs and feedback through daily operations. IP design, content planning and in-depth chain capabilities should be coordinated one by one. Even if it's a fun little toy, it's about value for money.
In terms of content, offline stores should be like magazine features to bring freshness to customers from time to time, including regularly providing different themes and changing new products, so as to firmly lead and lock in the tastes of the new generation of consumers.
On the other hand, it is also necessary to increase the viscosity of consumers and increase the frequency of communication with consumers through rich and frequent offline activities such as markets, pop-up stores, and communities. At the same time, we can also find more IP, brand and artist resources to expand the scope and imagination space for future products.
Of course, as the original owner brand of Beijing, continuing to explore the local cultural characteristics is also a cultural foundation that needs to be continuously explored by "Qingsong Supermarket".
Opened at the beginning of this year, and in the past two months, "Qingsong Supermarket" has ranked in the top 3 in the sales of the Joy Mall project, "exceeding our expectations". Next, the new attempt of "Qingsong Supermarket" is that the owners and artists of different sections will stay in the store to communicate with users in depth, understand their needs, and build a deeper relationship.
Accumulating fans through stores, in-depth interaction, and continuous connection with consumers will be the most critical part of the business of "Qingsong Supermarket", and only by forming a long-term, professional and attractive companionship with users will it bring more opportunities.
For "small interest business", an ideal state should be that the complete sales chain does not end with ** goods, but starts with ** goods. And being a community is not a slogan, but a real user accumulation + real spiritual identity.
The closed loop of these commercialization paths depends on the coupling of good products and IP, good content (capturing trends and pulses, design of online and offline activities) and execution, and multi-faceted capabilities, so as to continue to stick to loyal consumers.
Starting from interest and passion, relying on professional business thinking and innovative business models, we can finally find a sustainable "nugget land", which is the goal that players like "Qingsong Supermarket" are still trying to explore.