Shopping centers will become the bookstore's vitality

Five years ago, "Photosynthesis", which had been regarded as a benchmark for the transformation of traditional bookstores, closed down. At that time, only in Beijing, the good reputation of the "third pole" "wind into the pine" and other bookstores have also been closed one after another. The fragile profitability of the bookstore has made it a sad and difficult existence in the eyes of the people.

But today, things are changing.

For example, One Direction Space, which once struggled to make ends meet and was forced to ask its fans to pay for its relocation and renovation costs, is now one of the most valued tenants at Joy City's Chaobei store in Beijing.

For bookstores and other cultural businesses with low leasing power, shopping centers generally offer a wide range of renovation subsidies and longer lease terms, in addition to the most favorable rental terms.

For example, a city in the south that has attracted the Fangshuo bookstore not only subsidizes 25 million yuan in renovation costs, but also has various other support measures.

Once faced with the difficulties of survival of the entity bookstore, how to become a shopping center in the eyes of the "meat and potatoes"?

Shopping centers "grab" bookstores

In the view of Wen Juan, director of the promotion department of Joy City in Chaoyang, Beijing, the cooperation with One Direction Space is "quite lucky"!

For Wen Juan, the director of the promotion department of Beijing Chaoyang Joy City, the cooperation with One Direction Space is "quite lucky".

It was 2012, and China's commercial real estate industry had not yet matured in its thinking about the role of bookstores. "One Direction was forced to relocate due to a rent increase at Blue Harbor Bay. Joy City took the initiative to invite the bookstore to move in.

Compared with the mall's daily traffic of about 70,000, the bookstore's daily customer base is not large, but Wen Juan still sees One Direction as the brand name card of Chaoyang Joy City.

"There are not many good bookstores in China, and they are very popular in shopping centers." Wen Juan said that Joy City's projects in cities such as Shanghai and Tianjin have also introduced specialty bookstores such as Sisyphus and Today's Reading. The performance of One Direction's Joy City store in Chaoyang is very good. Every week, One Direction Space is approached by commercial organizations to discuss cooperation.

Page One, another bookstore, also has to choose from 20 to 30 offers a year.

"A lot of people wonder why bookstores are so beautifully decorated when their profits are so low?" said Zhang Zhang, business development manager at Page One. Jing Zhang, business development manager of Page One Bookstore, said it was due to the developer's support behind it, "Each of our branches is designed in a different style, with a high quality of decoration and a large area, which the bookstore alone cannot achieve."

Take the Page One store in Beijing's Taikoo Li Sanlitun as an example, which was originally home to eight different clothing stores, almost a "dead zone" for customer traffic.

Page One leased the space and turned it into a two-story, airy space, decorated in a style that was praised by artsy youngsters as having an "accent," with a constant flow of people in the afternoons and on weekends. Because of the huge investment, the lease term for Page One outlets is usually 8 to 12 years.

In the view of Zhu Lingbo, dean of the Asia-Pacific Institute of Commercial Real Estate, physical bookstores are favored by shopping centers because shopping is under pressure from e-commerce and homogenized competition, and there is a need to introduce experiential businesses.

"People go into shopping centers not just to buy things, but to shop along with their leisure and entertainment, hoping for better scenes, environmental experiences, and even cultural and artistic feelings." This is a higher stage in the cultural development of a country or city, he said.

For example, at Page One's Sanlitun branch, the space is utilized in a wide and stretching manner, with books and cultural and creative items placed in a staggered manner, a special dining area on the second floor, and a café outdoors, which is designed to give consumers an all-around experiential consumption space.

Generally speaking, there are several grades of shopping centers: the most basic lifestyle supermarkets and regional malls, all of which focus on shopping.

But in leisure and cultural shopping centers, such as Beijing's Blue Harbor and the World Trade Center, bookstores, galleries, small theaters, art museums and so on, the proportion of cultural business will increase day by day. At present, many shopping centers in China's first-tier cities are seeing this upgrading trend.

What kind of "tone" can a bookstore bring

On the other hand, the bookstore's business model has changed from a single book retailer to a composite business, which fits the demand for upgraded experiential marketing in shopping centers.

"This is a new variety of business, exactly should be a cross-border cultural theme store, books is only one of its genes." Zhu Lingbo commented.

Compared with the newly emerged bookstores such as Sisyphus and Fangshuo, the early "photosynthesis" also has the prototype of a composite business, but the degree of diversification is not enough.

In Zhu Lingbo's view, there are two main types of composite bookstores: one is a "department store-like" nature, clothing, bags, etc., and some even use books as a scene or medium, typical of the bookstore such as the Fangshuo; the second is like the "one-way space", from the bookstore into a public ** like the bookstore, the bookstore into a public **. The second type is like "One Direction Space", which is a bookstore turned into a public ****social place, with various activities such as training, salon, book launch, and so on.

In the past, shopping centers did not approve of this kind of complex operation, which was considered to be a bookstore's "banner" with a bunch of retail goods, but enjoying the low rent of a bookstore.

But in the last two years, shopping centers have a new perception of the bookstore business: readers have a consumer demand for composite business, relying only on book retailing can not make a profit. Bookstores have poor rental capacity, but have characteristics that can increase the differentiation and tone of the mall.

The so-called tonality is the culture and experience that the mall conveys to its customers based on its own positioning, its environment and scenes such as space, color and music.

Coffee catering and cultural and creative products allow books to be sold in a scenario that satisfies readers' preference for a cultural atmosphere. For example, in Fangsho Bookstore or Page One Bookstore, many readers will take photos first after entering the store.

A reality is that there are not many bookstores with good reputation in China, and shopping centers have limited choices. For example, Beijing's Hongkun Plaza shopping center once wanted to bring in a bookstore, but the latter's conditions were very high, with the mall paying for the renovation and book purchases, and the bookstore only branding and managing the store.

Wang Yongping, vice president and secretary-general of the China Commercial Real Estate Alliance, said the reason why bookstores are "asking for a lot of money" is due to the increasing number of shopping centers that want to attract bookstores, but also because bookstores are still weak in terms of profitability.

According to Wen Juan, the type of bookstore chosen is related to the positioning of the shopping center's clientele. In Chaoyang Joy City, One Direction Space is most valued for its attraction to social voices and spirituality.

"With it, consumers will gain a sense of cultural belonging." She said the main customer group of Chaoyang Joy City is the emerging middle class and the highly educated class aged 25 to 35, and the humanistic ideas and independent spirit conveyed by One Direction Space are in line with them.

Who the bookstore attracts

In Zhang Jing's view, the bookstore's more important return to the shopping center is the radiation effect of non-profit.

For example, in early 2016, actor Chen Kun held a book release event for his new book "The Big Universe" at Page One, which attracted many fans and media to the venue and attention, and also had a flow-drawing effect on Taikoo Li Sanlitun.

Page One has a long and stable relationship with Swire Properties Limited, the developer of the Taikoo Li Sanlitun project. In addition to Sanlitun, the bookstore has also been introduced to the company's other project in Beijing, Yite Harbor.

In addition to the three major incentives of lower rents, longer leases and renovation subsidies, some shopping centers also "cover" bookstores in their projects when they hold events.

Taikoo Li Sanlitun invited a professionally certified Santa Claus from Finland to visit the mall for Christmas 2015. They also interacted with readers at Page One, handing out gifts. Taikoo Li also utilized online and offline media resources to promote Page One.

The number of events that a bookstore can organize and participate in each year varies from store to store. Joy City has no hard and fast rules on this, "just that both sides will have informal exchanges and discussions from time to time." Wen Yan said.

Currently, there are two main types of shopping centers that tend to introduce bookstores. One is themed, with more young people or white-collar workers in the clientele and a high demand for spiritual culture; the other is the larger community-based supermarkets, where people are not satisfied with just buying daily necessities, and the presence of a bookstore raises the level of consumption.

"The mall hopes to use this to improve its tone, so that the introduction of the overall quality of the flow of people is higher, but also other businesses within the project is more in need of traffic." Wang Yongping said.

For shopping centers, its operation is a dynamic process, will continue to adjust the categories and formats, every three or five years is a major adjustment period.

And there is a gradient in business composition. Bookstores, along with restaurants and children's consumer goods, are all low-rent businesses, and are generally cultivated at relatively low rents as categories that raise the center's grade and drive customer traffic. "Use these formats to draw customer flow in first, and then make adjustments." Zhu Lingbo said.

In Wang Yongping's observation, although commercial real estate's perception of bookstores has grown by leaps and bounds compared with previous years, they are not a must for shopping centers. In addition to tonal considerations, there are often too many compromises to be made on commercial terms.

"Not only is the rent low, but the area has to be enlarged to allow it to operate profitable goods, such as coffee catering." He told the magazine, "So bookstores are now all about 'packaging', or else they won't move in even if the rent is all free, and in the end, bookstores are not a big money-making business."

The bookstore's caution

On the other hand, the bookstore also has its own considerations.

"We first look at the mall to see if there is a strong requirement for cultural attributes in the space format." "Zhang Fan, chief operating officer of One Direction Space, said, "Fortunately, compared with previous years, most malls recognize the importance of cultural business."

At present, One Direction has three branches in Beijing, located in the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Huajiadi, Chaoyang Joy City and Aegean Sea Shopping Center. The best performer is the Chaoyang Joy City branch.

In Zhang Fan's view, in addition to the factor of higher customer traffic, Joy City's operation of the mall has similarities with One Direction. For example, instead of positioning the mall as a place to sell things, it allows people to come together to communicate and interact.

The two sides have had many collaborations: when Joy City hosted the "Immortal Van Gogh" art exhibition in 2015, One Direction Space invited artist Zhao Bendi and others to hold a matching cultural salon; and the "Joy Boundary" lifestyle mall, located on the fifth floor, has been a popular destination for people to meet and interact with each other. One Direction Space also organized and participated in environmental drama and creative bazaar during the anniversary celebration of the "Joyful World" lifestyle theme space on the fifth floor.

Page One's Taikoo Li Sanlitun branch has at least three book signings per month, as well as exchanges and lectures with authors, readers and guests, which exceeded the developer's expectations.

"The kind of commercial project it relies on depends on the quality of the project, its location, the developer's qualifications, and whether the overall brand mix is in line with the bookstore's positioning." Jing Zhang said Sanlitun gathers a large number of consumer hipsters, and Page One is just the right place to bring an innovative lifestyle to these consumers who appreciate simplicity, fashion and intellectualism.

Some bookstores are worried about the difficulties of planning activities with shopping centers***, such as the needs of the two sides do not match; to do the activities need funds, but the activities of the crowd may not be able to be converted into an effective flow of customers.

In this regard, Zhu Lingbo believes that shopping centers have two kinds of needs: one is to gather popularity, as long as the overall popularity of the "support" up, even if the phase of sales did not improve, but also active shopping mall atmosphere.

The other situation is that there are many other cultural consumption categories in the mall, and as long as there are people entering the mall, there will be associated consumption such as drinking coffee and watching movies.

Despite the constant invitations, Zhang Fan is cautious about expanding new stores. In addition to limited energy, more importantly, the complexity of the complexity of the business, can not simply copy the chain.

"There are books and coffee and cultural and creative products, and most of all there are so many activities, if you don't control it well, it's easy to pull down the quality." He explained.

It is foreseeable that in the future, there will be more thematic and experiential shopping centers that will look at physical bookstores.

But the composite mode is not a panacea for bookstore survival, how to avoid similarity, highlighting the characteristics of the operators is becoming a new test.