Xiaomi to open 61 stores in 4 days
Once focused on online retail, Xiaomi is embracing brick-and-mortar stores
Xiaomi’s network of retail stores is growing fast.
How fast? Try 61 new stores in just four days.
It’s a sharp turnaround for Xiaomi, which made its first pot of gold by focusing on selling handsets online.
In 2011, founder Lei Jun said cutting out the cost of running brick-and-mortar stores is the key to keeping Xiaomi’s devices affordable. He even bragged about how he knew e-commerce better than Google -- when Google was struggling to sell Nexus handsets online.
“I think, to this day, no longer is there anybody who is skeptical about our online-only business model. Within the first 34 hours of our new product release, we have tallied more than 340,000 orders. That is a crazy amount,” he said at the time.