China’s bricks-and-mortar stores stress the shopping experience, rev up with technology to survive the onslaught of online shopping
- Alibaba hauled in a record 268.6 billion yuan of transactions in just 24 hours this Singles’ Day, an amount that took the insurer AIA a whole year to earn in 2017
- As much as 23 per cent of China’s US$5.61 trillion of retails sales last year took place online, a sixfold jump from 4 per cent in 2011, according to data from Oliver Wyman.
For 90 minutes on a Sunday evening, Tracy Ma and her two girl friends experimented with a combination of lipsticks, eyeshadows, eyeliners and blushes in a MAC Cosmetics store along Shanghai’s prime shopping belt.
The two-storey outlet is fitted with an augmented reality counter, allowing walk-in customers like the 20-year old office clerk to simulate and display her looks on a large screen, using different shades of make-ups. A deep purple lipstick made her look like a vampire, she said to screams, laughter and wefies, before trying out the coral hue and ochre shades.
Without any prior intention of adding to their collection, the trio left the store on the bustling Huaihai Road with about 1,200 yuan (US$170) worth of purchases from Estee Lauder’s cosmetics chain.
“It is like a cosmetics theme park, full of colourful and innovative toys,” Ma said in an interview after the purchase. “We particularly came just to explore the store with no plan to buy any thing. It was more like a weekend tour for us.”
Ma’s in-store interactive experience is a refreshing twist to China’s shopping scene at a time when many have sounded the death knell for bricks-and-mortar retail stores, which illustrates how retailers are reinventing themselves to turn foot traffic into online clicks to staunch the exodus of customers to Taobao, Tmall.com and other online platforms.