Not long ago, the debut of Apple's Jing'an retail store frequently appeared on the hot search.
Behind this, not only because it is the largest Apple flagship store in Chinese mainland, but also because its design integrates into the fashionable and classical Shanghai neighborhood, attracting many citizens to take photos and check in. From March to May this year, Shanghai will continue to hold the "First Shanghai" spring series of activities, and you will see more first-time store shows of well-known brands.
Some people don't know what a "first store" is, but it actually refers to the first store opened by a representative brand in a certain area in the industry. The first-store economy refers to the brand power of the first store to enhance consumer experience, expand the popularity of business districts, and enhance the commercial vitality of the city. Since 2018, when Shanghai first proposed the "first-store economy", it has gradually been used as a barometer of the city's economy.
Among major cities, Shanghai leads the country in the "number of first stores" - in 2022 and 2023, more than 1,000 brands choose to settle their first stores in Shanghai, including leading brands in various industries, such as Apple in the consumer electronics industry, Nike in the footwear and apparel industry, Starbucks in the catering industry, etc.
On April 29, Laiyifen, a snack industry, opened the world's first new retail space LABmini in Shanghai. On the opening day, the store's exterior design, featured products, and service experience attracted the attention of many consumers.
When first stores pop up, not all brands can achieve the desired results. In fact, whether the first store can be popular and how long it can be popular depends on whether it meets the needs of the public.
LABmini's first store: a national "new snack landmark"
When spring is in full bloom, more and more people like to get away from the city and get close to nature, so outdoor sports such as camping, hiking, and self-driving tours have become more and more popular.
In fact, the city should not become a forest made of steel and concrete, but should pursue the harmonious coexistence of man and nature, so that everyone can enjoy the convenience brought by high technology in the city, and at the same time, feel the comfort and tranquility of nature. Such a city can win the love of its citizens and be full of vitality.
In Shanghai, for example, the first impression is that it is a cosmopolitan city. But in fact, Shanghai is also building a blueprint for the harmonious coexistence of man and nature. The Shanghai Municipal Government has made it clear that it will promote green development and become the most touching background color and the warmest bright color of the city.
Realizing this vision requires not only the efforts of the government, but also the participation and joint efforts of major brands. It's clear that many brands use their flagship stores as their first store, with a strong emphasis on the harmony between man and nature. For example, the previously opened Apple Jing'an store and the newly opened Laiyifen LABmini store are examples of this concept.
In the wave of digitalization, technology elements are everywhere, however, many consumers have shown strong interest in the integration of "technology + nature". This combination not only highlights the convenience of science and technology, but also integrates the comfort and warmth of nature into it, realizing the harmonious coexistence of modern technology and nature.
Many people come to Apple's Jing'an store for the first time and find that it is not only connected to the quiet Jing'an Park, but also to the bustling Nanjing Road, creating an atmosphere of harmonious coexistence between man and nature. In addition, Apple also designed the logo of the Jing'an store as a magnolia in Shanghai, and a natural atmosphere came to the face. Upon entering the store, the soft light tones of the walls are matched with wood and metal decorative elements, which are both technological and warm and comfortable.
Similarly, in the Nanjing West Road business district, which is known as the "window of the world", Laiyifen LABmini store has successfully created a snack shopping space that is full of scientific and technological atmosphere and natural beauty.
Walking into the LABmini store, customers will be placed in a creative and dynamic environment, surrounded by social areas, scene areas, IP areas, experience areas and handicraft areas, as if they have started a wonderful journey across time and space. In addition to the embellished technological elements, it also allows consumers to deeply experience a fresh and healthy consumer culture through the smell, sound and visual multi-sensory touch of the space, and takes them into a natural and ecological snack world.
As Jiang Zhenduo, CGO of Laiyifen, said: "LABmini is not only an innovative concept store with a mid-to-high-end positioning, but also a design concept that goes beyond the simple pursuit of beauty. It integrates the concept of "nature returns to the city", and strives to create a harmonious and pleasant snack experience space for consumers. ”
Experience first: a look at the core of a new landmark for snacks
If the first store only meets the needs of consumers in terms of space design, it is not enough to impress them.
Nowadays, the needs and expectations of consumers are increasing, and they are looking for not only a beautiful "skin", but also an interesting "soul". In other words, the brand's first store must not only be beautiful and comfortable in terms of space design, but also meet their needs for freshness and diversity through the experience of products and services.
For example, the Starbucks Roastery in Shanghai, which opened in 2017, is also regarded by many as a "coffee fantasy park", and its popularity and popularity are still high, and it has even become a "tourist landscape" loved by tourists. Behind this, not only because it is the world's largest Starbucks selection store, but also because of its consumption model of "first store + immersive experience scene", which is favored by consumers.
When consumers enter the Starbucks Roastery in Shanghai, they are often attracted by the huge coffee production factory, where they can get an immersive experience of roasting, producing, packaging, and brewing, while watching the coffee come up close and reassuring them about the quality. In addition, the bakery also set up diversified scenarios such as cake baking, coffee peripherals, tea and wine, etc., to enrich the experience of consumers.
Similarly, snack consumption is actually entering a new era of "experience-oriented", and brands need to be excellent in health and scenario-based creation in order to impress and win the hearts of consumers.
According to the data of the "2023 China Healthy Life Trend Insight Report", more than 60% of consumers have health needs such as "whether snack products meet the needs of no additives/less additives", and it can be said that the concept of healthy eating has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. How to meet the health needs of snack consumers? Laiyifen put a lot of effort into the opening day of the LABmini store.
On the one hand, the LABmini store has launched a new series of "Yifen Meihao", insisting on using high-quality, fresh and healthy raw materials from all over the world, preserving the natural taste of fruits to the greatest extent, and resolutely not adding any pigments and flavors. In addition, the store also launched a new sugar-free tea drink - Yipin barley tea, as well as the Dragon Boat Festival limited "Gao Zong", etc., to meet consumers' demand for fresh seasonal, healthy additive-free, seasonal food.
On the other hand, LABmini stores have placed freshly made sales areas, Aberdeen devices, self-service checkout machines and rest areas at the entrance, and the booths display ready-made products in the shape of conveyor belts, so that consumers can intuitively feel fresh and healthy.
Many people's snack consumption has not only focused on the product itself, but has been integrated into the life scene.
Snacks have become a way for many people to satisfy their emotional value. According to a NielsenIQ survey of domestic consumers, "satisfying emotional value" has risen to the second place among the main motivations for buying snacks, with the proportion of choices as high as 82%. In fact, the scene can stimulate users' emotional resonance through immersive experience, so snack brands should also carry out in-depth diversified layout in the scene.
This time, the LABmini store has created a space integrating multiple scenes such as nature, fashion, leisure, parent-child, health, and trendy toys by providing healthy, delicious, and fresh products, as well as loving and warm services.
For example, LABmini stores have carefully set up themed zones including imported food, rural revitalization products, children's food, IP zones, and seasonal limited editions to cater to the diversified needs of consumers. In particular, the "Walking Zone" conveys a positive and optimistic life concept to consumers with the spatial layout of natural artistic conception and the healthy snacks limited to spring.
In addition, the store also innovatively introduced coffee and bakery product lines at the same time, supplemented by the sales of related peripheral goods, carefully created three core characteristic areas of freshly made, freshly blended and ready-to-sell, and successfully established the world's first LABmini flagship store integrating coffee, baking, trendy toys and casual snacks. For example, in the freshly baked series, the newly launched "Pistachio Chocolate Snail Roll" has quickly become a hot product due to its unique "bigger than face" design, while the "Durian Coconut Latte" launched by Laika has also been warmly sought after by consumers for its unique taste and has become the store's signature hit.
In fact, Laiyifen's entry into the baking field can not only open up more room for growth, but also attract different customer groups to enter the store for consumption. According to the data of Guanyan Report Network, the scale of China's baked food industry will reach 351.8 billion yuan by 2025, which is undoubtedly a huge market. At present, there is no large-scale advantage of the head brand in the market, and the market concentration is low, which provides an opportunity for Laiyifen to further explore the increment.
On the other hand, the boundary between snacks and baking is actually relatively blurred, and the overlap of consumer groups is very high. According to iiMedia Research, 66.8% of consumers use baked goods as snacks in consumption scenarios. Laiyifen introduced the bakery category to further meet the needs of snack consumers and enrich their service experience.
The first store of a brand that can gain insight into consumer needs and improve the experience can unlock the high popularity code.
The quality of the first store: the password from traffic to retention
The brand builds its first store, emphasizing long-termism, not short-term popularity. Turning traffic into retention is the key to building a first-store economy.
To achieve this, it is important to achieve the coupling of brand and region.
Why did you choose to land in Shanghai for the world's first LABmini store in Yifen? Because Shanghai is speeding up the construction of an international consumption center city and focusing on cultivating a unique launch economy. In April 2024, Shanghai issued the "Several Measures on Further Promoting the High-quality Development of the Initial Economy", launching 7 political measures to promote the high-quality development of the initial economy, launching the "First Shanghai" brand and promoting consumption leadership.
The unique urban charm, market attractiveness and policy support have made Shanghai the first choice for domestic and foreign brands to launch new products and open their first stores. The opening of LABmini's first store in the world in Shanghai is also taking advantage of the trend. The reason why Nanjing West Road business district was chosen is because it is known as the "window of the world", and it is the business district with the largest number of first stores in Shanghai, where the high-energy debuts, first battles and debuts of the world's top brands such as Apple and Starbucks are gathered.
In addition to the city's help, the brand's own efforts are also important. In order to achieve long-term long-term vision for the first store, the brand must have quality thinking and ability.
Brands such as Apple, Nike and Starbucks are able to continue to launch a variety of first stores, and the life cycle of the first store is long, and one of the core reasons is to always adhere to quality. Because in the long run, we believe that quality and service are the key to winning the trust and loyalty of our customers.
The layout of the LABmini store fully demonstrates Laiyifen's insistence on quality and the implementation effect of the fresh snack strategy. Since 2020, Laiyifen has launched a forward-looking "Fresh Snacks" brand strategy, committed to ensuring the freshness and quality of snack products through systematic measures. With the vigorous development of the healthy snack market, Laiyifen has always adhered to consumer needs as the guiding principle, and "high quality and cost-effective" as its core competitiveness and primary consideration to meet the expectations of consumers.
So, how exactly should we improve quality?
For snack brands, the core of improving product quality lies in its health and safety. At the end of last year, Laiyifen upgraded the brand slogan to "Fresh Snacks Laiyifen, the leader of healthy snacks", emphasizing that freshness and health are the key to achieving "high quality". In addition, Laiyifen is further concretizing and standardizing the concept of healthy products, and promoting the development of products in the direction of season, short-term insurance, "five lows" (low sugar, low salt, low oil, low calorie, low GI), and "three zeros" (zero sugar, zero fat, and zero calories). In addition, the application of zero-additive, zero-preservative technology will be strengthened.
Snack brands must constantly apply advanced technologies and processes to stay relevant and adapt to the changes of the digital age. In recent years, Laiyifen has effectively improved product quality and taste through close cooperation with supplier partners to jointly develop and optimize production processes. At the same time, the digital platform was used to strengthen communication and collaboration, and the supply chain was successfully optimized, thereby improving the overall operational efficiency.
On April 19, 2024, the 17th Laiyifen Partner Summit Forum was held in Shanghai, with the theme of "Co-creation and Co-construction of New Quality Productivity". Shi Yonglei, chairman of Laiyifen, said that the connotation of new quality productivity lies in high technology, high efficiency and high quality, which is not only the direction of enterprise transformation and upgrading, but also the core of meeting consumer needs and enhancing brand value.
In addition to products, store and service experience are also the key to improving quality. In recent years, with the rapid development of new consumption, Laiyifen's innovative store model has become more and more abundant and mature. It has launched a set of innovative store models to accurately match people, goods and yard resources, including LYF Mall, which is positioned as a fashion trend, LYF Go, which is simple and practical, LYF Life, which is close to the people and convenient, and the mid-to-high-end LABmini innovative concept store.
Relatively speaking, the LABmini store is more exploratory and pioneering in terms of service and experience. In the future, the LABmini store will be replicated and promoted across the country as a new store model of Laiyifen. As Shi Yonglei, founder and chairman of Laiyifen, said:
"LABmini wants to create a 'new landmark in the snack industry' in the national snack industry."
Only by improving the health and safety of products, the efficiency of operation, and the experience of services can snack brands truly improve their quality in an all-round way and achieve from "flow" to "retention".
epilogue
In the business world, the only constant is change.
Founded in Shanghai in 1999, Laiyifen now has nearly 3,700 stores across the country, and its products are exported to 18 countries on five continents, with more than 89 million users and a total of 860 million consumers. It is expected that in the future, with the promotion of LABmini stores across the country, Laiyifen will present a more brand-new look to consumers.
This also brings new value enlightenment to the snack industry and even the entire consumer field: if a brand wants to continue to go through the cycle and continue to be recognized by consumers, on the one hand, it must anchor the needs of the public and constantly innovate and upgrade in products, services and experiences; on the other hand, it needs to maintain a continuous spirit of self-innovation.