Source: Financial Sector News
In winter Beijing, there is a cold air in the air, walking in the alleys of Sanhuqiao South Road in Haidian District, if you are not prepared, it is difficult to notice that between the ordinary residential buildings, small restaurants, small shops and vegetable markets on the street, there is a "low-key" and unremarkable humanistic archaeology bookstore.
The store's environment is simple and quiet, a total of 125 square meters of two rooms, filled with 103 bookshelves from the ceiling to the ceiling, displaying a dense collection of archaeology, literature and literature books, the distance between the shelves is narrow enough to accommodate only one person to walk through. There are only four staff members in the bookstore — Hong Xia, a young, beautiful-looking female store manager, and three long-term stable clerks. It has been ten years since Hong Xia began to work part-time at this bookstore in her third year and took over the bookstore.
The "Gao Leng" archaeological bookstore has become a "hardcore" magic weapon to explore the way of survival
Many people will ask, what makes such an unpopular archaeological bookstore survive to this day? It is not difficult to see from the founders An Yezhi and Hong Xia that professionalism and persistence are the "magic weapons" for the survival of humanistic archaeology bookstores. When the bookstore opened in 2011, the industry was in a downturn, and archaeology bookstores were also struggling to operate. As the only independent bookstore in the country specializing in archaeological literature and literature books, archaeology bookstores do not follow the "business economy" of those internet red bookstores that sell coffee and desserts, but insist on selling books as the only income, and constantly strive for excellence and pay attention to the professionalism and quality of books. In the past 10 years, the professional positioning of archaeology has never changed.
In order to strengthen the "professional" characteristics of bookstores, those popular books with "hot selling potential" have been excluded from the book category by Hong Xia. "The views of this type of book do not necessarily stand up to scrutiny. Archaeological books are very informative, and readers who come to the store are basically for the information. I have to take responsibility for them. Hong Xia explained.
Originally, the bookstore covered an area of just over 30 square meters, with only a row of bookshelves, marked with 26 English letters, but as the shelves grew, the letters were not enough, so it was replaced by "A Thousand Words". The accumulation of books over 10 years has built a treasure trove of knowledge for insiders. Practitioners of the archaeological industry, such as workers and students in universities, research institutions, museums and other fields, are regular customers of humanistic archaeology bookstores, and the bookstore adds 150 new books every month, displays more than 10,000 kinds of books, and collects more than 60,000 kinds of books, making it the head player of the private archaeological book industry.
Li Yanyan, deputy research librarian of the Palace Museum, who came to the Palace Museum, once exclaimed in front of the oracle bone frame, "It's so complete! Books that I haven't found anywhere else, I have them here. Liu Yang, director of the Asian Art Department at the Minneapolis Museum of Art in the United States, makes a special trip to the archaeology bookstore every time he returns to Beijing to "buy books by the pound." Two boxes at a time, enough for 48 kilograms... In archaeology bookstores, there are many "iron fans" like this. Now that the fixed source of customers has developed from domestic to foreign, Hong Xia said that foreign orders account for about 5% of the bookstore's annual sales. A group of archaeologists in the United States, Japan, Germany, Austria and other countries have become repeat customers of bookstores.
Different from the law of "selecting books" in ordinary bookstores, humanistic and archaeological bookstores follow the unconventional path of "book selection". Relying on the word of mouth of "repeat customers", the bookstore is familiar and recognized by more and more insiders, because of its love and persistence, this "niche" bookstore has finally entered the public's field of vision.
How do niche bookstores open online channels? JD.com provides support for third-party merchants
From the initial difficulties, to today's stable position, and even the network "popular" has become a punch card, love is Hong Xia's unchanged original intention, professional is to support her to sell books to the extreme "king", and the story of archaeology bookstore and Jingdong provides a possibility for the online development of physical bookstores.
In October 2014, the Humanistic Archaeology Bookstore entered Jingdong and became a third-party book store, named Jin'an Archaeology Wenbo Book Franchise Store. At first, when choosing an online book platform, bookstores were facing survival problems, and cost and platform support policies were the two aspects that Hong xia valued most. The preferential policies given by Jingdong Books to newly settled bookstore merchants are very attractive to Hongxia, in addition, the reputation of Jingdong Books for genuine goods, genuine good books and the quality of service that insists on delivering goods to users' homes also coincide with Hongxia's expectations. Since then, the bookstore has expanded from offline to online, rejuvenating.
Relying on JD.com's huge user base, humanistic archaeology bookstores have reached more potential consumer user groups. Hong Xia introduced that at first the online store just wanted to serve as a display window, but did not expect more and more people to pay attention to, and gradually began to have researchers and institutions find bookstores and place orders in batches. With the accumulation of time, the recognition of bookstore stores in the reader group is increasing day by day, and the monthly sales of stores are less than 10,000 to 20,000, 30,000, 50,000, 80,000, 100,000...
As a convenient online channel, Jingdong Books can not only facilitate readers to buy books, but also a multicultural gathering place, its inclusiveness is strong, the book category is rich, including the needs of all kinds of readers, even such a niche archaeological category can also emerge, so that books and users can find their own needs, find each other, and guard a small and beautiful cultural space.
Today, the Humanistic Archaeology Bookstore has been rated as a "special bookstore" in Beijing for many times, and recently became a "demonstration bookstore" in Beijing in 2021, and has received rent subsidy support. These honors give Hong Xia the motivation to continue to persevere, "I hope we can go further on the road of selecting good books and serving readers." ”