On the weekend, I went to two shopping malls in the surrounding area and inspected the experience store where the car entered the supermarket at one time.
The first is Hopson Hui, located at the intersection of Xidawang Road and Guangqu Road in Chaoyang District, Beijing. As an experiential shopping mall integrating shopping, catering, entertainment and leisure, Hopson Hui has gathered more than a dozen automobile brands in the "New Energy Vehicle Bazaar".
GAC Hechuang Experience Center on the first floor of Hopson Junction
After more than half a year, there are two stores on the first floor of Hopson Hui, GAC United and Weilai Automobile. Despite the popularity and crowds in Hopson, these two stores seem deserted. Located on the fifth floor of Hopson Hui, the "New Energy Vehicle Market" used to have more than a dozen new energy vehicle brands gathered at the most, and now only five brands such as Jihu, Lantu and Xiaopeng are still struggling.
Hopson's R&F Shopping Center, less than a kilometer west, is even more miserable. An ideal car is placed in the walkway on the first floor, and a Cyrus M5 electric car is placed in the Huawei store on the north side. Since it is placed in the Huawei store, the popularity is OK. I asked the Sales Consultant at the scene how sales were going, and he said he could walk more than 20 cars a month. It seems to be stained with Huawei's light.
The ideal car on display on the first floor of Beijing R&F Center
Pole Fox, Xiaopeng, Geometry, and BYD have all previously set up experience stores in R&F Shopping Center, but now they have all withdrawn.
The boom in cars that was all the rage in supermarkets last summer is currently on the decline.
Some analysts believe that the reason why cars entering supermarkets has begun to decline is mainly due to the following reasons:
First, the investment is too large and the cost performance is not high. Located in the center of the city, large supermarkets and shopping malls, the location is relatively good, the flow of people is also relatively large, for emerging car brands to increase exposure and popularity, the effect is relatively good. However, these supermarkets and shopping malls, the rent is also ridiculously expensive. According to media reports, there are currently 80 domestic car brands in shopping malls or supermarkets, opening nearly a thousand offline experience stores, most of which are new energy vehicle brands. But these stores make almost no money. The high and rising rents, combined with utility bills, are simply too expensive.
Cyrus cars on display on the first floor of Beijing R&F Center
The second is these offline experience stores that enter the supermarket, except for a few brand OEMs direct investment, the rest are mostly special dealers investing in manufacturers to subsidize. Dealers are ultimately going to sell cars, if you can't sell a car, won't the investment be adrift? After testing the waters for a while, the investment dealers can only opt out.
Third, for Volkswagen brand cars with low bicycle profits, entering the supermarket to open an experience store will not help sales much. The reason why the new car-making forces are most keen on entering the supermarket, increasing brand exposure and popularity, the composition of advertising is greater. And those traditional car brands, the popularity is already high enough, there is no need to spend a lot of money into the supermarket to open an experience store to expand the visibility.
At present, the frenzied boom in opening experience stores in supermarkets is clearly receding. Not all brands are suitable for entering the supermarket. For luxury car brands with high bicycle profits, as well as new car-making forces that are not short of money, the advantages of opening experience stores in supermarkets outweigh the disadvantages. For low-end car brands, entering the supermarket to open an experience store is likely to lose money and make money, which does more harm than good. (End)
(This article was published simultaneously to China Automotive Trend Network)