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In the year when the primary school went to junior high school, Lin Shao was admitted to the county's key junior high school with the first place in the township. In the three years of the county, in the face of the fresh world and the confusion of growth, Lin Shao fell in love with the county game hall.
"If there was an Internet café in that era, I must have been an Internet addict." Lin Shao, founder and CEO of Ten Point Reading, told Titanium Media that during that time, his mind was full of games and heroic dreams. For a time, he changed from "someone else's child" to "someone else's bear child.".
Later, the middle school entrance examination failed. The confusion brought about by the setback made the fourteenth and fifteen-year-old Lin Shao a little decadent. Coupled with the fact that mom and dad are also very angry, I feel that my life is even darker.
Fortunately, on an idle afternoon, in a bookstore in a small county town, Lin Shao came across a book, Lu Yao's "Life". On the title page of the book there is a sentence that says, "Although the road of life is long, there are often only a few steps at the critical point." ”
He suddenly woke up, maybe the change now is the crucial point on the road of life. So I began to study hard, and I was admitted to the ideal university as I wished, so I fell in love with reading.
This has also become the original intention of Lin Shao to create the Ten Points Reading Project. Since its establishment in 2014, the current business scope of Ten Point Reading covers literature, film, education, video, short video, live broadcast, new retail space and other fields, with a total user volume of more than 80 million, positioned as a platform for cultural life with reading as the entrance.
<h2>Exclusive "Urban Cultural Park"</h2>
It can be said that the establishment of Ten Point Reading and the subsequent rapid growth are benefiting from the wave of online reading and digital transformation. However, in the context of the general decline of physical bookstores, the Ten Point Reading Plan accelerates the pace of offline bookstore layout.
Lin Shao's reason for titanium media is that the bookstore in the small county gave him a lot of reading space, and also built a very beautiful reading world for him and cultivated reading habits. The cultivation of this reading habit had a great impact on the trajectory of his life after that.
"Many confused and difficult moments in life are reading to guide me, I think I benefit because of the bookstore, and I also hope to read, I hope that the bookstore will help more people and more people." Lin Shao said.
According to the "2020-2021 China Physical Bookstore Industry Report" released by the China Book Publishing Industry Association, in 2020, although about 1573 bookstores in China will close, 4061 physical bookstores will be newly opened. The number of newly opened bookstores far exceeds the number of closed bookstores, and there are about 2488 new bookstores in the country.
"It's very different from ten years ago, ten years ago there was a wave of bookstore closures, and the blow to bookstores was very big. Therefore, cultural consumption is one of the most potential consumption areas, with the development of science and technology, more time is spent in the spiritual field. Lin Shao told Titanium Media.
Bookstores are important places of cultural consumption in the city. Everyone goes to the bookstore and the mall, not only to buy and buy, but also to consume, to "waste", to relax. The bookstore is a field, a cultural field, hoping that the confused people will find a spiritual habitat in the book.
Headquartered in Xiamen, in order to test the waters of the physical bookstore business, after ten o'clock reading opened two bookstores in Xiamen. This year, as the epidemic was gradually controlled, Lin Shao's team decided to leave Xiamen and make his first stop in Changsha. Choose Changsha because Changsha's user group ranks in the top ten of the platform, which is a city with strong reading needs.
Each city has its own unique character, how to participate in and integrate into the local spiritual life?
Changsha Bookstore is positioned as a "new wave". For the understanding of Changsha's urban life, Lin Shao believes that Changsha is a city that integrates new trends and cultural heritage, and the habits of Changsha people who love to learn and love to read also attract the arrival of the Ten Point Bookstore. Combined with the strong cultural and entertainment characteristics of Changsha city, the characteristics of new families, office workers and new youth groups, the theme of Changsha store is positioned as "reading new wave" which is in line with the cultural characteristics of the city.
Combined with the strong cultural and entertainment characteristics of Changsha City, the Changsha store of Ten Point Bookstore has upgraded and innovated in terms of business combination, space editing, and new retail model.
For example, in terms of space design, in changsha bookstores, combined with Changsha Yuelu Mountain, Xiangjiang landscape and landscape, the green plants, trees, tiles, water patterns, mountain range intentions, flowing arc bookcases and punching board decorative belts, such as meandering water systems, mountains.
Ten point bookstore Changsha store space design
Users go to the bookstore to read books, you can add the store manager WeChat. The store manager will push the online listening content to the user for free experience, and then become a paid member of the bookstore. In addition to listening to more than 1,000 books in the online APP, you can also have a cup of coffee every month offline, as well as some member-exclusive welfare activities, courses, etc
<h2>How can bookstores create a new retail model? </h2>
Even if bookstores carry people's beautiful yearning for cultural life, it is impossible to avoid the fact that most bookstores in China are currently difficult to make a profit, especially in areas with developed commercial real estate where store rents are more expensive.
Previously, Eslite Bookstore, which was regarded as the benchmark of the new model of bookstores and opened up by the "compound operation" model of brand-driven shopping malls, bookstores and retail, was opened in Shenzhen for less than two years, and the unsustainable news triggered many discussions inside and outside the industry.
Why is it difficult for urban bookstores to make a profit today? Lin Shao believes that in addition to factors such as online e-commerce channel discounts and rent costs, the development of the bookstore industry is relatively slow and not so "new", especially in terms of digital upgrading.
As an Internet company, Ten Point Bookstore does not simply want to be an offline bookstore, they want to do china's new retail bookstore.
What is the new retail model of bookstores? In Lin Shao's view, first of all, open up online and offline user data and membership systems, and create a "beautiful life platform" across borders between online and offline. Second, bookstore users are invited to enter the online service community, enjoy online content services, watch cultural live broadcasts, etc. In addition, users can conveniently purchase coffee, books, etc. through the online mini program of the bookstore.
Based on the user-operated bookstore information system, Ten Point Reading has made many attempts. From external selection of suppliers, to internal self-development and optimization, from H5 to Mini Programs, APP, WeChat, how to let users enter the private domain and experience better services, this intermediate team has experienced a very complicated process.
When they first started as a bookstore, they just offline the online business, dividing the space into four major sections: reading, good things, coffee, and classrooms. Later, it was found that simply moving the online content line to the offline did not make the user pay.
Offline, users care more about the experience, the companionship, and the "interaction" behavior in the process. Taking the ten-point classroom as an example, there are many audio and video courses such as the ten-point reading app and mini program, which are very popular online, but when it comes to offline, it takes longer to accompany, serve, answer, and interact.
The same is true for shopping. Users come to the bookstore, want to buy cultural and creative products, need to take it in their hands to perceive, the placement of this item is very important, sometimes also need the bookstore staff to assist in recommending users, associated items recommendation, etc.
Only if the back end does a lot, the front end can bring a good membership experience and user experience.
However, he believes that simply discussing selling books and selling coffee is a very shallow understanding of bookstores. What kind of books and services does each bookstore offer? To find their own style soul, to understand their own user group is a group of people, and then to build their own unique sense of brand trust.
Just as Tsutaya Bookstore was initially positioned as a slightly older user group, ten-point reading also has obvious user characteristics. Women account for the vast majority, currently accounting for up to 80%, Lin Shao said, this is not deliberate, but the natural growth of the platform.
A long time ago, the team observed that there are many female users in the background data, and female users are relatively active, loving to read, love to share, and love to consume. So they will continue to adjust and iterate according to these data, and slowly there will be more and more female users, and the content will become more and more adaptable.
Serving female users well in the short term is the differentiated characteristic of the brand that Ten Point Reading believes. The mother crowd and the parent-child crowd are very active and very core consumer groups on the platform. In the long run, they hope to radiate to the mass population that wants more people, more family groups. (This article was first published on the Titanium Media APP, interviewed and written by Li Chengcheng |)