The Covid-19 outbreak is fundamentally changing consumer habits, which, once the virus is out of the way, could set a new direction in the sales model.
Xiaomi was one of the first to close its physical stores at the start of the spring season in regions where Covid-19 was rife, to protect its employees and customers from infection. These restrictions have made the manufacturer realise that perhaps crowded mall stores are not the only way to physically see and buy a product in person.
The company aims to bring its products to fans in a more direct way, without crowded shopping malls. The Xiaomi Pop-Up store is one of the easiest ways to provide an essential service without the crowds and exorbitant rental fees.
With the Xiaomi Pop-Up shop, street sales can take a new direction.
The epidemic has changed many of us, changing consumer habits. Online sales have soared, and in the last six months many Hungarians have switched to online shopping completely. Service providers were able to handle this in time, so the increased traffic is no longer a disruption. Although the online shop may still be the way of the future (convenient, fast; you can opt out if you don't like it), many people still insist on buying in person.
The Xiaomi Pop-Up shop aims to be present at street level with direct sales, so that it can move easily between cities where there are no shopping centres (or Mi Store stores) or where it is more difficult to get products from further afield.
Aleksandar Mitic, Tekpoint's distribution manager and official distributor of Xiaomi in Vienna (Austria) presented the Mi Store new, rolling model(Rolling Mi Store's), which allows the company to move to rural areas or relocate in case the coronavirus case rate is too high and limits the opening hours of the malls. A criterion, of course, is to allow street vending in the municipality.
As you can see in the demonstration video, the Xiaomi Pop-Up shop allows you to move and sell the most relevant products from one place to another. Not all products are included, just the main Xiaomi IoT system devices and best-selling smartphones.
It is container-based, with a simple opening and closing system that allows employees to open and close the "mobile shop" in minutes. It includes a platform to "take smartphones out into the street" (mobile tables) and attract the gaze of the public passing by the Xiaomi Pop-Up shop.
"It's a very good initiative to offer direct street-level sales away from the big crowds we see in cities and as an alternative to direct sales outside shopping centres." It can also reach users who live further away from large cities, and with a concept similar to mobile grocery stores, but with a weekly rotation, it can cover an entire suburb, a population that has been isolated until now.
The Xiaomi Pop-Up shop is just one example of what the company is willing to do to remain a leader in smart home products and smartphones. It has the ability to find solutions to the problems that the pandemic situation has put many businesses in a difficult position.
Whether we will see such Pop-Up shops in Hungary depends on the local contracted partners.
