Red. From “clicks” to a physical store
In Shanghai, Global Retail News visited the Red store, a physical version of the eponymous fast-growing website. This concept is totally focussed on customer satisfaction. It was a struggle not to buy absolutely everything.
In Shanghai, the beauty department of the newly opened RedHome is in effervescence.
For some omnichannel retailers there is only a small step from “clicks” to stores. When followed with a quality reputation by word-of-mouth and customer reviews, success is often easily earned. The Amazon 4* store in New York seemed rather cold and disappointing, so the Shanghai-based very first Red Book* (or Little Red Book) appears as an audacious bet. It is April 11th 2019, at 4pm in the Joy City North shopping centre. Amid this pretty quiet shopping mall, customers are flooding into the newly-opened Red store, humming like a beehive. Covering a sales area of 150 sq.m, the store offers only the best sellers from the Red e-commerce website. Created in 2014, Red posted a turnover of US$1.5 billion in 2018 and announced sales of US$2.9 billion in 2019 (i.e. 20 billion yuan).
“I don’t know when Instagram is doing the same, but Red is the fastest-growing social network in China” said Adrien Fabry, C.E.O. of the Phoceis agency. “Their concept is really strong. With a click you can switch from a social network to an e-commerce platform. It is an ultra-qualitative platform. All the digital ‘influencers’ are offered with Red. There are very few counterfeit products on the e-commerce pages, compared to Taobao and Tmall”.
