Written by Xue Yongwei, author of "Finance and Economics Weekly"
Editor/ Dong Yuqing
Exit Beijing East Fourth Ring Middle Road and drive east along Chaoyang North Road. Within five kilometers, the Pearl River Roma Garden, Star River Bay, Swan Bay and other communities with an average price of 80,000-100,000/㎡ are distributed on the north and south sides of the road. Among them, the most expensive Star River Bay was once called a high-end social platform for the rich by Hurun, the founder of the Hurun Hundred Rich List - in 2020, it opened its private gardens to the outside world, and also attracted many Internet celebrities on the Little Red Book to punch in and post pictures.
This plate from Chaoyang Park in the west to Qingnian Road in the east is known as chaoqing plot by industry insiders, also known as "CBD back garden", and the Beijing real estate circle is recognized as the most ideal CBD living area.
In May 2010, a well-known commercial complex, Chaoyang Joy City, rose up here, which greatly met the consumption needs of the high-end people in the Chaoqing Plate. Later, it also became an important gathering place for young people in Beijing, for whom there were endless Internet celebrity shops, endless popular food, and endless time.
In 2021, Joy City Holdings Had a total sales of 26.4 billion yuan nationwide and a passenger flow of 220 million. Among them, Chaoyang Joy City ranked first in the contribution list with annual sales of 4.4 billion yuan and nearly 23 million passenger flows. There is no doubt that a significant portion of these 4.4 billion sales are generated by influencer shops.
But in Chaoyang Joy City, the update frequency of net red shops is extremely high. A person familiar with the matter told the "Finance world" weekly that at present, chaoyang Joy City has more than 500 brands, and the average annual replacement rate of stores is about 30%. This also means that about 150 stores will be replaced every year.
Young people who come for the influencer shop
It was already 9:30 p.m., and a tide shop on the fourth floor of Chaoyang Joy City was still crowded, and there was no time for the fitting room to be idle. Under the dizzy light, several girls stood in front of the wall of internet celebrities to take selfies.
The store manager, Dina, was a young girl, and at this moment she couldn't take a break, and she was torn between the cashier and the small storeroom, constantly handing clothes to the fitting room.
As a apparel brand from South Korea, this is its first offline store in Beijing, "it only opened in December 2021, and there were so many customers in those days that they had to limit the flow every day." Dina said that this is also very normal, and internet celebrity brands will embark on the peak of traffic when they come to Chaoyang Joy City with large passenger flow.
Dina told Caijing Tianxia Weekly that less than a month after opening, the store's highest sales in a single day had reached 400,000 yuan, and in one month of opening, it sold more than 6 million yuan. But the price is that after the store closes at 10 o'clock every night, employees have to work an extra hour to send customers away.
In the eyes of old customer Yu Jing, among the many business circles in Beijing, SKP represents "gui", Qiao Fu Fangcaodi represents "literature and art", and Chaoyang Joy City "has a lot of very hot things".
Chaoyang Joy City, designed in the shape of a fan, has 11 floors above ground and 3 floors underground, with more than 500 brands converging here. Yu Jing's favorite trend collection store tomato pocket is on the second floor, she likes the cheap beauty products and small toys inside, to choose gifts for friends in the Year of the Tiger, and stay for an hour.
In Joy City, there are many such "time devouring machines". For example, the tide play shop bubble Mart, the miscellaneous goods collection store Jiumu Miscellaneous Goods Society, the beauty collection store wow color, the store is not too big, every holiday, want to shop in it for a while, inevitably crowded people.
Guo Xinyan, who lives at the junction of Chaoyang and Tongzhou, will visit major shopping malls on weekends, including Blue Harbor, Guomao Mall, and Wukesong, all of which have left her figure. As a video choreographer, Guo Xinyan is extremely sensitive to the word "trend", and she has long found that Chaoyang Joy City is different from other places, "there are many shops on Douyin, and there are many Internet celebrities."
In fact, the number of Internet celebrity restaurants in Chaoyang Joy City really crushes other shopping malls. In the atrium on the second floor in the direction of the main entrance, there is a popular bakery Godran Cherrier, and the smell of baked milk can radiate tens of meters away. This shop is known as one of the top ten Internet celebrity bakeries in Beijing, and has caused a phenomenon in Hong Kong K11.
Qin Xiaoxue was attracted by Gottran Cherrier's "Ode to the Gods", she patronized here at 6 p.m. on a Sunday, but the freshly grilled original koan was already sold out and could only wait for the next batch. Five minutes later, she got her food, there was still a queue at the collection desk, and five or six young people were waiting quietly with trays.
After paying the payment, the customers sat down expectantly, Qin Xiaoxue took out his mobile phone to take a photo, took a bite, and did not eat the special, "Mainly to come and punch a card." ”
GC bakery on the second floor, people waiting for payment with trays. Photo/ Finance World Weekly
On the first floor, Luxihe, an internet celebrity pastry from Nanjing, is also queuing, and the team is far better than Gontran Cherrier from Paris. Customers who want to choose pastries at the window are to be wrapped around the separation belt outside the store twice. Wang Lin, the manager of the Luxihe store, told Caijing Tianxia Weekly that the store only entered Chaoyang Joy City in September 2021, and after opening for less than half a year, queuing has become the norm, "Especially when the New Year is approaching, many people come to buy gift boxes." ”
According to Wang Lin, in the past six months, although the store's footprint is several times smaller than other stores in Beijing, its sales have ranked in the top three, and even ranked first at one time, surpassing the larger Daxinghuiju store and haidian Xinzhongguan store.
On the Little Red Book, on Douban, and on Weibo, there are posts that come to punch cards: Metal Hands Iron Hand Coffee and Milk Tea Dingliu Xi Tea on the first floor, namacocoa chocolate on the third floor, Chongqing Hot Pot Brother Laoguan on the seventh floor, and fried skewers, puffs, ice cream and other snack bars concentrated on the first and eighth floors. On the seventh floor, a jianghu restaurant that swept through Shanghai was silently opened half a step.
Chaoyang Joy City, relying on stubble after stubble of Internet celebrity brands, introduces people here like magnetism, and has become the head commercial body in Beijing.
The Luxihe store on the first floor of the negative floor is always surrounded by many people from morning to night. Photo/ Finance World Weekly
Fragile shopkeepers
For Chaoyang Joy City, as many new brands as there are, how many old brands close their stores.
In the past 2021, Caijing Tianxia Weekly found that the catering stores in Chaoyang Joy City were particularly frequently dismantled during a multi-month visit. In August, yunhai cuisine next to the seven-storey skating rink was withdrawn, replaced by Korean-style barbecue fire donkey fire; The fire was built to remove the store, and it was replaced by Songhelou Su-style soup noodles. Although it was still hanging on the floor guide at that time, it had also been replaced by a Japanese eel shop. On the eighth floor, the pepper kitchen, which was stationed at the beginning of the opening of Chaoyang Joy City, has been replaced by another Japanese barbecue after ten years.
By October 2021, LADY M, a super-red cake brand that had been in Joy City chaoyang for three years and had swept through Beijing's business districts, was officially withdrawn. As the "Hermes of the cake industry", many people have paid for its mille-feuille cake that costs 900 yuan a piece. Two months later, the Chaoyang Joy City store, a new element that led the domestic light food trend, also announced the official closure of the store due to poor management, and the store that once occupied two floors and was full of people was no longer a lively scene.
In the public comments, many consumers have found that Chaoyang Joy City changes stores frequently, "the replacement is too fast, especially catering", "the desserts that came to eat a while ago, before they have time to comment, they have closed the store".
An important reason why shop changes are so frequent is the impact of the epidemic. The epidemic instigated wings, and it was a tsunami for the merchants of Joy City. On Tuesday, January 18, 2022, an asymptomatic infected person was reported in Shigezhuang Village, five kilometers from Chaoyang Joy City. Immediately, the flow of visitors to Chaoyang Joy City began to fluctuate, and a waiter at a restaurant on the eighth floor admitted, "If there were 10 people who could come before, there were only 6 this weekend." ”
An Di, who has worked in Chaoyang Joy City for five years, told Caijing Tianxia Weekly, "In the two years affected by the epidemic, the speed of changing stores has been exceptionally fast. Among them, the clothing and retail on the third floor and the fourth floor are still relatively strong, but the catering above the sixth floor is too dependent on cash flow, and the exchange is particularly fast. ”
In addition to the impact of the epidemic, Chaoyang Joy City is also working hard to continuously introduce updated Internet celebrity brands, so that the original store is always worried about its own survival situation.
The location of Luxi River was formerly a bakery, which did not attract people like Luxi River, so it was later replaced by Luxi River. Now, Luxihe is also facing a new opponent - Mo Mo Dim Sum Bureau. This internet celebrity pastry shop from Changsha is open at the elevator entrance on the fifth floor, and customers come in from the main entrance and can go directly through the flying ladder of the mall.
At present, the Mo Mo Dim Sum Bureau has been renovated for more than two months and has not yet officially opened, but Chaoyang Joy City seems to have never spared the publicity of the Mo Mo Dim Sum Bureau, calling this opening the "finale debut". An employee of Luxihe inadvertently expressed his concern to the Weekly Magazine of Finance and Economics: "After the opening of Mo Mo, some of our guests may be separated. A fifth-floor employee, witnessing the children's clothing store here being replaced by a net red pastry, sighed: "The Mo Mo Dim Sum Bureau is specially designed to fight Luxi River." ”
"Brands want to use the popularity of shopping malls to drain traffic, and shopping malls also need these brands to drive development, and shopping malls and brands complement each other." Huang Jiajia said. IPG China chief economist Bai Wenxi also said, "One of the problems with using Internet celebrity brands to support the field and adsorb traffic to maintain popularity is that the internet celebrity brand itself changes and iterates very quickly. ”
On January 19, in response to chaoyang Joy City's investment conditions, shop replacement ratio, store removal standards and other issues, the "Finance and Economics World" weekly asked Joy City for verification, and the other party said that it was inconvenient to reply.
In August 2021, next to the notice of the withdrawal of Yueta Star, the opening announcement of another store was announced. Photo/ Finance World Weekly
Why Joy City?
Many young people who love to visit Joy City probably don't know that this commercial complex, which is now at the forefront of the trend, was not originally a collection of Internet celebrity brands.
In 2010, as a commercial real estate brand under COFCO, Chaoyang Joy City selected the Chaoqing plate, which was still a desolate place at that time.
At the beginning of its establishment, Chaoyang Joy City copied the model of Xidan Joy City in 2007, aiming at the narrow customer base of the emerging middle class aged 18-35 in the city, but at that time, the Chaoqing plate was still a non-core business district, and could only introduce community-based brands such as Aeon Supermarket and Department Store, Jinyi Cinema, Geyouhui KTV, and Blue Sky City Vocational Experience Park as the main store. Aeon Supermarket once occupied as many as four floors of space.
Two years after opening, Chaoyang Joy City abandoned its old partner, parting ways with the main store, Aeon, and only retained one basement floor for it. The reason is that the management of department stores is self-contained, the settled brands are uneven, and the synergy and interaction with other brands in the mall are poor, which is not what joy city wants to improve freshness and build its own unique format. For Aeon Internal, it is also because it cannot match other brands in terms of sales, and it feels a lot of pressure.
This change can also be seen as the first strengthening of Chaoyang Joy City's positioning of its youth taste. Three years later, Han Shi, executive director and general manager of Joy City Real Estate Co., Ltd., recalled the brand adjustment and still called it a "big thing". He said frankly, "In the specific operation of shopping malls, department stores and brand stores can borrow from each other, but with the process of mutual development, there are some conflicts. ”
Subsequently, in order to get young people and improve user viscosity, Joy City began an endless toss, first "member" play, and then offline theme exhibition. Even the parking lot on the fifth and sixth floors was converted into a so-called commercial space "Yue Jie" in 2015, with gardens, vegetation, water systems, terraces, and some elements that were once unnecessary in shopping malls.
The "culture" label on Chaoyang Joy City is becoming more and more obvious. Since then, brands including Gao Xiaosong's bookstore "Xiaodao" and Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore have begun to settle in, as well as Internet celebrity literary and art restaurants such as Flower Kitchen and Seesaw.
Of course, the fire of Joy City is indispensable to the nearby high-end residential areas. Star River Bay, Swan Bay is the gathering place of many stars, pearl river Rome Garden, Runfeng Shuishang, Youth Hui, Huafang Yicheng, but also brought together a considerable number of urban middle-class and North Drift youth, a little farther Gome First City, is The welfare house that Huang Guangyu distributed to employees that year. Imagine that more than a decade ago, the people who could enter here were all people with high education, high income and high spending power. According to a 2020 report by CBN, of the nearly 27 million passenger flows in Chaoyang Joy City, 18-35-year-old customers account for 80%.
In addition, from 2012 to 2018, while Chaoyang Joy City developed inward, the dividends of urban change also helped it.
In six years, Line 6 of the Beijing Subway, which connects Haidian Wuluju Station to Caofang Station, was opened and further extended to Lucheng Station and then to Jin'anqiao Station. The sign of Chaoyang Joy City has since appeared at Exit B of Qingnian Road of Metro Line 6. The convenience of public transportation has greatly attracted the arrival of young people, and it has attracted a steady stream of Internet celebrity brand stores.
Even the supporting facilities around Joy City are also rubbing the traffic of Joy City. The Joy Apartment behind Joy City is called "Little Joy City" by the hairdressers in the apartment. Walking at the elevator entrance of Joy City, or walking on both sides of Joy City, a few people will pop up from time to time to pull customers to "design hair", and then take you to "Joy City" to sell your own hair projects. Joy City, on the other hand, has become the "credit endorsement" of these merchants.
A private hairdressing studio employee told the "Finance world" weekly that there are a total of 28 floors high, more than 30 hairdressing, beauty and nail salons below the 26th floor, and a small room rent only needs 10,000 yuan a month, but backed by Joy City, you can still sell 488 yuan of washing, cutting and blowing, without worrying about customer flow.
Behind Chaoyang Joy City, a 28-storey commercial and residential apartment, Joy Apartment. Photo/ Finance World Weekly
Traffic is still extending: 3 minutes north from Chaoyang Joy City, there is a food street called "Wanton Food Street", densely distributed with fried skewers, seafood buffets, Sichuan cuisine, amaranth dried beans and other gourmet restaurants, most of which can last until 2 o'clock in the evening. The red fences on the street, the pink reed camps, and the space astronauts have all become holy places to take photos and punch cards.
Further away, Huafang Yicheng, which is 1 kilometer away from Joy City, has opened more than 20 bars in seven or eight years, and Internet celebrity bars such as Peng Lei's "North Sea Monster" by Peng Lei, singer Chen Hongyu's "Dream Bar" are located here. Perhaps, when young and fashionable people finish visiting Joy City, this is a good place for them to refill another drink.
Even the students of the Communication University of China, 4 kilometers away, affectionately call their well-equipped library the "Great Reading City". In the variety show "Trend Partner", Liu Yuxin, a member of THE NINE, accurately remembered the appearance of the sixth floor of Chaoyang Joy City, and said to Zhou Yangqing, "You are like the sculpture on the sixth floor of Joy City." ”
Huang Jiajia, a brand agent of Chaoyang Joy City, told Caijing Tianxia Weekly that when formulating the store opening plan, Chaoyang Joy City is undoubtedly a project that needs to be paid attention to, and among the many commercial entities in Beijing, Chaoyang Joy City has its own unique features.
"On the whole, the passenger flow and quality of Chaoyang Joy City are better." Huang Jiajia said that for brands that want to enter the country, opening a store in Beijing means a lot, for brands that want to be among the first lines of Beijing, it is crucial to enter the head mall, and in the head mall, SKP sales are leading in the country but the main luxury goods, Sanlitun Taikoo Li is the most fashionable but the rent is too high, Xidan Joy City has a higher passenger flow but most students, the purchasing power is not as good as Chaoyang Joy City, and the quality of the customer list is slightly inferior to Chaoyang Joy City.
A number of merchants also revealed to us such a consensus: this is a good business district. In short, there are many people and more money here, so there are more Internet celebrity brands.
In front of the newly opened fashion brand clothing store on the fourth floor, there is a long queue of consumers who come to visit. Photo/ Finance World Weekly
Hidden anxiety
Although Chaoyang Joy City has formed a unique effect, for joy city holdings behind the operation, the anxiety of survival is always there.
In the past two years, Chaoyang Joy City has changed dramatically due to the epidemic, and joy city distributed throughout the country is even more so. According to the financial report, in 2020, joy city holdings net loss of 387 million yuan, down 118.88% year-on-year. By 2021, Joy City Holdings finally began to turn a profit, with national sales increasing by 40% year-on-year and passenger flow reaching 220 million.
In terms of rental income, in the first half of 2021, among the total rental income of 1.344 billion yuan in the 8 Joy Cities, Chaoyang Joy City accounted for 329 million yuan, and Xidan Joy City accounted for 317 million yuan, far exceeding joy cities in other cities. When the occupancy rate of Chaoyang Joy City reached 99%, and the rental income increased by more than 50%, the occupancy rate of Joy City in Jing'an and Yantai in Shanghai was less than 90%, and the rental income of Joy City in Hangzhou was as much as 5% lower than that in the same period in 2020.
In 2021, in terms of sales and passenger flow, Chaoyang Joy City surpassed its originator Xidan Joy City.
Behind the seemingly eye-catching data, Chaoyang Joy City is also facing severe challenges. Since 2017, the "family city" has gathered in shopping malls and begun to make large-scale adjustments to the brand, introducing a new group of fashion merchants, bookstores, KTV, escape rooms, game halls, DIY workshops, pet leisure bars, more young people can find a place to stay here. In 2019, Huiju launched a new round of adjustments, introducing many Internet celebrity brands similar to Xicha and Haidilao. According to the data, in fiscal 2018, the number of visitors reached 27 million, which is about 1 million higher than the annual passenger flow of Chaoyang Joy City.
Located in the east of Beijing, Hopson Hui, which opened in 2017, is close to the two major business districts of neighboring trade and Huamao, and is directly connected with Metro Line 7 and Line 14, and what young people follow, Hopson Hui will attract. Andy, the above-mentioned employee who has worked in Chaoyang Joy City for five years, told Caijing Tianxia Weekly: "Personally, after the opening of Hopson Hui, it still divided a lot of passenger flow from Chaoyue, and the owners of the surrounding communities of Chaoyang Joy City are getting older, and Hopson Hui is adjacent to Baizi Bay, and there are more young people and more Internet celebrities renting houses. ”
In addition, the net red brand is not non-Chaoyang Joy City. Beijing Lize Tianjie, which only opened in 2021, this new project of Longhu Group in Fengtai District, adjacent to the commercial body of Beijing's Second Ring Lize Financial Business District, has introduced many concept stores, customized stores, image stores, and also launched a membership system, and also shouted out to use a "young, fashionable" attitude to "innovate urban lifestyle", as soon as it opened, it became a new Internet celebrity punch card.
The young consumer base is always limited. In an interview at the end of 2020, Zheng Zheng, general manager of Chaoyang Joy City, has made it clear that "the so-called youth culture and lifestyle do not only point to the youngest wave of consumers in the overall customer base, nor do all young people like nightclubs and tide brands, so we must cover different levels of segmentation needs." ”
Perhaps it has been noted that the "net red economy" is difficult to sustain, and at the beginning of 2022, the positioning of Chaoyang Joy City has directly changed from "youth living space" to "urban ideal living destination".
According to people familiar with the matter, two art museum projects on the tenth floor are currently in preparation. "Finance and Economics" Weekly also saw on the tenth floor, there are already art exhibitions began to warm up, there is a baffle opposite the co-working office, which reads "covering an immersive interactive experience space covering 100,000 square meters". But whether this new development plan will make consumers pay is still unknown.
For those young people who come to Joy City, internet celebrity shops are emerging in an endless stream, and even if Chaoyang Joy City is updated frequently, it is impossible to know the psychology of young people changing all the time.
Yu Jing, who took a taxi from Wangjing to Chaoyang Joy City, came to her favorite fashion brand clothing store according to the address on the Little Red Book, but there was a long queue in front of the door, which made her interest fade, "suddenly I don't want to shop." She opened Douyin and began searching for the next place, a nearby internet celebrity bar recommended by a well-known debater.
Like most young people who go to Joy City, Yu Jing doesn't seem to be worried about a small minefield, after all, here, the most important thing is the Internet celebrity shop.
Night comes, return to the quiet chaoyang Joy City. Photo/ Finance World Weekly
(In the text, Dina, Yu Jing, Guo Xinyan, Wang Lin, Andy, Huang Jiajia, and Xiao Liu are pseudonyms)
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