Night view of Meilanfang Commercial Street, Changsha.
Red Net Moment Reporter Li Xin Correspondent Hua Zehong Changsha Report
Meilanfang, a waterfront street by Meixi Lake in Changsha. Since its opening in December 2014, the project has achieved an opening rate of 98%, which has become a successful business model for Changsha's commercial districts and a city living room for catering and leisure for Changsha citizens.
Commercial real estate is difficult to do, especially commercial districts. Such a commercial street that is not close to the city center and does not have a large flow of people has been in a lukewarm state before 2017. Why has it quickly become a holy place for internet celebrities to check in in the past two years? What kind of thinking innovation and changes has the trading team behind it experienced? Recently, the reporter interviewed the Meilanfang trading team - Shanghai Luteng team, and listened to how they decode the "cultivation record" of Changsha Internet Celebrity Pedestrian Street.
Password 1: Attract young customers
Time goes back to 2016, and the Meixihu area has opened two large shopping centers: BBGM Xihu Xintiandi and Lanxiu City. Both projects have a large commercial volume and have quickly established a brand in the Meixi Lake area, becoming a place for many residents to entertain and relax.
and these two shopping centers are very close to Meilanfang. At that time, Meilanfang was positioned as a community supporting commercial street mainly for catering. However, Meilanfang only had a construction area of 28,000 square meters and only had 27 merchants. It was impossible to compete with BBG Meixihu Xintiandi and Lanxiu City for customer groups.
"The cruel market competition environment forces us to find the business positioning of the project from a larger market." Zhang Changxiang, president of Shanghai Luteng Commercial Group and operator of Meilanfang, introduced that since January 2017, the Shanghai Luteng team has officially taken over Meilanfang's business adjustment and reform work. After repeated investigations, it was found that the Meilanfang Commercial Street front line is surrounded by a lake and has beautiful landscapes; at the same time, the project is close to Luyun Road Subway Station, which has convenient transportation. Therefore, the project has the possibility to attract young customers in Hexi and even the entire Changsha.
Finally, Zhang Changxiang and his team formulated the idea of letting the project attract young customers in the city and quality customers in the surrounding areas as supplemented by quality families, and positioned it as an "international comic life theme district", focusing on four major business formats: "cultural and creative life", "fashionable catering", "romantic bar" and "parent-child entertainment", and started a two-year business adjustment and reform work.
Password 2: Make the block accessible
After confirming the positioning, subsequent business format adjustments will be crucial. If the adjustment is successful, Meilanfang Commercial Street will be activated. If the adjustment fails, everything will be returned to zero.
Zhang Changxiang introduced that after they took over the operation and reform of Meilanfang Commercial Street, they first carried out institutional transformation of the infrastructure in the commercial street. In the past, the facade of the Meilanfang Commercial District was a modern building, which was too tough. They applied for a special budget from the owners to transform and upgrade the scene atmosphere of the commercial street, adding platforms, parasols, canopies, cross-border lighting and a large number of situational sketches. The street scenes of the commercial street were quickly beautified, attracting a large number of young people to come to the project to take photos and consume every day.
At the same time, open up the traffic flow of customers. There are three shopping routes for passenger flow in Meilanfang Commercial Street: one is the outdoor Yangtze River Road (car road); the other is the pedestrian trail by the lake, and the other is the inner street. Zhang Changxiang introduced that when they planned the shop, most of the merchants on the second and third floors entered consumption from the second floor, and a small part gave the first floor door, so that many single stores were independent of the first floor; most of the shops along the lake road on the outermost side were cut from the middle, only opening the doors to the car road, and a small part was transparent inside and outside; then, cultural and creative brands were introduced to these independent stores on the inner street, increasing the shopping ability of the inner street, and opening up the three driving lines from the vertical. Before the adjustment of
, there were only 27 merchants in the entire commercial street. During the adjustment, they planned 85 brands. In 2017 alone, they achieved the introduction and opening of 78 brands, and the number of brands in different business formats increased significantly, making the block more accessible.
Password 3: Differentiated investment promotion
From the past community supporting commercial streets dominated by catering and food to today's "comic life theme districts" composed of four major business formats. Among them, the "cultural and creative" and "bar" business formats are all new positioning, and investment promotion is not small.
"We divide the four major business formats into 'main business formats', 'driven business formats' and 'auxiliary business formats', and catering is still our main business formats." Zhang Changxiang said that in the past, the catering format mainly recruited the traditional specialty restaurant , but now, they recruited the romantic "Internet celebrity restaurant" and "casual dining bar", so that they can form a difference with the restaurants in nearby shopping centers. Pu Yufeng, executive president of Luteng Commercial Group and Meilanfang trader, revealed that they have encountered great difficulties in investment and entrepreneurship and driving business formats. Changsha's cultural and creative physical stores generally have poor profitability and insufficient willingness to open a store. In the three months of investment promotion in early 2017, there was no breakthrough in cultural and creative business formats. Later, we planned a "entrepreneurship competition" for college students for cultural and creative business formats. Because the theme of the event is in line with the national direction of employment guidance for college students, it won the strong support of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Communist Youth League and hosted it.
During the continuous publicity process of the event, the Meilanfang project has attracted a lot of attention from cultural and creative merchants. Carver Bookstore was the first to enter the project and became the main store of the project. Some cultural and creative brands that have been waiting and watching in the past have also signed contracts one after another. In cooperation with the top ten entrepreneurial projects selected in the "Entrepreneurship Competition", by August 2017, the project had signed contracts with more than 20 cultural and creative life brands, laying the foundation for the cultural and creative atmosphere of the project and promoting the entry of high-quality catering brands. The bar investment is even more difficult, and they signed a bar brand until December 2017. However, as Meilanfang Commercial Street became more and more famous in 2018, they have successively introduced four bars.
Password 4: Consumer-centered
As a commercial street where many merchants are already in business, how can we not only take into account the operations of existing merchants, but also complete the overall business adjustment task?
Pu Liufeng introduced that at the end of 2016, as a commercial street that had been open for two years, although it was not very popular, there were still some high-quality chain commercial brands that could make profits. They distinguish the commercial brands in operation according to their operating conditions into Class A with good business operations, Class B with average business operations, and Class C with poor business operations.
"The biggest difficulty encountered in the adjustment process is that the merchants in the business do not cooperate with the adjustment." Pu Liufeng said that they launched the adjustment of Class C merchants. Most of these merchants were discouraged by the business and were troubled by signing long-term lease contracts and had to insist on operating. After applying for the owner to give them some of the historical arrears, the clearance adjustment was successfully achieved. Second, they focused on analyzing the reasons for the general business conditions of Class B merchants and found that some merchants were caused by the excessive size of their rented shops. Therefore, for such merchants, we can reduce their rent pressure by reducing their operating area. We have allowed them to partially withdraw or transfer and renew their rent to continue to operate for these merchants.
In addition, it is also remarkable in terms of marketing activities. Xia Shaowen, CEO of Houji Business Management, Hunan Houji Group and chief consultant of Meilanfang Business Management Operations, introduced that throughout 2018, they invited many street wandering singers to perform on the commercial street from time to time, and often organized some flash dance performances, and often organized "cultural and creative markets" on the commercial streets and lakesides to cultivate and create the cultural and creative atmosphere of the project. In 2018, high-quality commercial brands such as "Old European Coffee", "Hua Moumou", "Beer Commune" and "Margaret" were introduced. They discussed the rectification of decoration drawings with merchants over and over again and assisted them in managing decoration details. "The 'Old European Coffee', which has only opened recently, was completed after 17 revisions of drawings and meticulously crafted and decorated for 8 months. After opening, it quickly won the love of consumers."
Looking at the current prosperous scene of Meilanfang Commercial Street, Zhang Changxiang summarized that the secret of their business adjustment is: the positioning must be accurate, the adjustment must be ruthless, the investment promotion should be fast and the operation should be stable; Pu Liufeng summarized: When targeting, the adjustment is based on the business positioning, and the real chapters are seen in the details; Xia Shaowen said that investment promotion is not about recruitment but about business, and operation is not about luck but about business, and everything is consumer-centered!
