Retail Brands Rush Into The Flash Store. What Is The Picture?

In the new retail era, the physical retail enterprises are facing great challenges. In order to drain more efficiently and form differentiated competition with online marketing, the retail brands have adopted a variety of creative marketing methods. Among them, "flash shop" has become one of the ways for the brand to enter the market to test water at a lower cost.

Marketing mode that can not be ignored

Flash shop means temporary shops in commercial gathering areas for retailers to promote their brands in a relatively short period of time.

Usually, a flash shop will last for 1-3 days to 1-6 months.

With the fresh and interesting brand concept, excellent and outstanding image display, and experienced marketing plan, the flash shop has repeatedly cleaned the circle of friends, and has become a popular card making shrine.

Jones Lang LaSalle, director of China's retail real estate department, told the China Commercial Daily reporter: "the flash shop will also generate more new formats in the future competition marketing and competition, and will gradually infiltrate along the first line to the second tier market as other retail channels, and become a marketing method that the brand side and owners should not neglect."

However, an excellent flash shop is not just to move its original storefront to a new location, whether it can make customized design for the target market, focus on the linkage with the region, complementation with the characteristics of the shopping mall, and fit with the humanities theme, so as to provide consumers with a unique experience to try products, which is something that the brand side needs to consider when opening the flash shop.

"Successful flash shop should be the integration of factors such as grasping details, using creative means, and accurately expressing brands."

Help mall to go

The rapid development of online retailing has squeezed the demand of traditional physical retail market to a certain extent. The emergence of flash shop has become an opportunity and carrier to further integrate and develop the online and offline businesses.

At present most of China's flash shops will choose to land in shopping malls, especially in the atrium, multi business location, square and other public spaces in shopping centers.

For the owners, these "fresh faces" are helping the mall to gain more popularity and help to pform the area. At the same time, they also cater to the trend of "experiential consumption".

In response to this trend, Jones Lang LaSalle has launched a special rental platform for flash shops in Australia. At present, there are similar commercial public spaces in China for short term lease App.

Over the past few years, China's major cities have vigorously developed the retail real estate market and concentrated on the back of many high-quality retail properties. For the owners, the whole industry is inevitably faced with the problem of "homogenization".

How to create a unique personality and break out of it has become a pressing problem at the moment.

It is also unrealistic for large-scale replacement of brand names to be time-consuming and laborious. Jones Lang LaSalle has observed that prospective retail real estate owners have increased their brand diversity through their cooperation with the flash shop.

The owners' expectations for flash shops have also changed from a popular gimmick to a potential long-term brand name.

At the beginning of this year, Jones Lang LaSalle has successfully assisted the "Peet" sCoffee peye coffee, known as the "coffee master", to build its first brand flash shop in Shanghai Hang Lung Plaza.

At present, Jones Lang LaSalle is assisting the French pocket handbag brand Elleme to open a six month flash store in Hong Hang Heng square, to fully help the emerging brand of fashion industry's debut in China.

The creative event of the brand side

Flash shops often appear in front of consumers in a unique image, supplemented by high-end customized services, bringing new shopping experiences to customers, creating a kind of interaction between users and products, enabling consumers to experience products and understand brand culture, aiming at deepening the brand's good impression in consumers' minds and stimulating repeated purchases.

The short-term rental costs of these public spaces are lower, but they often achieve good brand display and promotional effects.

Therefore, try the flash shop mode for the brand side, the most intuitive interest is to attract attention by creativity, and quickly start fame.

In May 6th this year, Jones Lang LaSalle helped Italy Gelato brand GROM to hold a day's birthday flash store in Shanghai Xingye Tai Gu Hui.

That day attracted more than 2000 new members to join, and has continued the queuing boom of GROM stores.

In addition to the simple brand display, the flash store is more important for the brand side to play a role in testing its marketing strategy.

Testing and identifying the target customers and timely feedback from customers, completing the product pricing test, and draining the online platform are the biggest benefits for the brand to try the flash store when entering the new market.

For example, a lot of fashion brand of e-commerce brand through the flash shop, to provide customers with try to make it feel the material, and obtain accurate user data, and then through the offline store "feed back" stimulate online sales.

At the same time, the brand side can also reduce the operating cost through the flash mode, and gradually occupy the online market in reverse direction.

In late May, the US small clothing brand UrbanOutfitters, with its help from Jones Lang LaSalle, made its first flash game in mainland China in Shanghai Xintiandi Nan Li, and many UO fans came a long way to make this young brand complete with Shanghai's fashion center.

Jones Lang LaSalle believes that as the number of flash shops increases, the brand operators will compete with each other in the competition, which will increase the operating costs and trigger more pain spots.

How to effectively balance creativity and actual sales will become an important topic. This field will also usher in more survival of the fittest. Professional strategy layout and effective action practice are the only way to win.