This article explores the design of three new retail offline experience stores by NetEase Yanxuan, located in Shanghai and Hangzhou. The stores, designed by XU Studio, are a testament to the brand’s commitment to providing high-quality products and a unique shopping experience. The design concept draws inspiration from nature, featuring trees, wood, and natural materials, creating a warm and inviting atmosphere that encourages customers to linger and explore. Each store offers a unique blend of functionality and aesthetics, showcasing a range of products from apparel to home furnishings and food.
A story about us and Yanxuan. We first met in the winter of 2019, looking back now, it seems to foreshadow that this will be a warm encounter. In March of the same year, we visited Harbin together, and had a deeper understanding of the brand during the entire afternoon on Central Street. Some of Yanxuan’s spirit, making good life within reach. Becoming a national brand that provides good quality of life for Chinese consumers, making products return to value, helping manufacturing understand new consumer needs, and releasing the value of the supply chain.
Honesty, innovation, customer-centricity, allowing customers to spend less money and less time to live a better life, some voices about XU Studio, using good design to improve the life around us, we think this is an important reason why both parties can come together quickly. We serve brands and bring better experiences to consumers. We also listen to feedback from consumers and brand owners, to update and create more special experience ways. Make the commercial consumption model humane, high-quality and trendy. The real scenes in the Yanxuan space, trees in the light, people in the shadows. This is a simulated scene, hoping that people can be sheltered by the “tree”, approach, and rely on it.
**Yanxuan Taikoo Hui Store:**
As NetEase Yanxuan’s first offline Plus customized store, the Xingye Taikoo Hui store has attracted much attention from concept to landing. It is not only the first offline store in Shanghai, but will also undertake the task of launching NetEase Yanxuan IP products and popular new products in the future. Special location, special positioning, will surely have a special role.
Abandoning the conventional retail display of spreading and quantifying, the designers hope that customers here will not only look down at the products, but also look up at “life”, look at “tree shadows”, look at “seasonal changes”, and find their own life aspirations. Here, we hope to spread the quality of life.
The “ginkgo leaves” with Shanghai feelings are transformed into “breathing trees”, surrounded by four major sections of “food, home, personal care, and travel” personalized experience areas. In the rhythm of light and dark, in the turning of mottled tree shadows, is the pulse of this city, and it is also Yanxuan’s sincerity in listening to the real needs of the customer base.
Inheriting the tone of wooden white, it is a symbol of Yanxuan’s brand spirit, “simple, free, comfortable”, here you only need to enjoy experiencing various products in the “Yanxuan Forest” without having to worry about anything else, because this Plus custom store, the shopping experience is taken to the extreme, eliminating the boundaries between online and offline transactions, and utilizing big data platforms, allowing users to personally enjoy the convenience of “offline consumption, online after-sales”, creating a seamless and zero-difference retail experience.
**Yanxuan Zhengda Store:**
We live, play, and grow under the big tree. People have been using wood to build homes since ancient times. We have a special affection for “trees” and “wood”.
Continuing the exquisite simplicity of the Taikoo Hui flagship store, the NetEase Yanxuan Zhengda Plaza store has a unique comfort and affinity. After organizing the basic display interface, the design first considered using the local height difference in the venue to create space. Simulating the upward washing light of the sky and the combination of tree shapes and branches, it attempts to bring people back to the environment closest to their natural instincts, the desire for sunlight, the reliance on trees, and the love for home.
Under the “big tree” in the central area, various home scenes unfold in turn, whether it’s bedding, relaxing chairs, sofas, or kitchen products, you can lie down, sit down, and try them out. You can also lean against the big tree and slow down your pace on the lazy sofa.
In addition to the central “big tree” area, 3 product display areas with abstract “tree branch shapes” as the core are scattered on the left and right, with appropriate tightness. In the store, you can not only easily slow down, but also be surrounded by dazzling products, satisfying the “buy” impulse, trying goods at will, full of happiness.
**Yanxuan Hangzhou Store:**
Located on the street in the old city of Hangzhou, facing the bustling Sports Field Road, we use “tiles” and “trees” to build a place where everyone can stay for a while.
The first time the door was lit was on a winter evening. Choosing such a time was to provide a warm light for those who are rushing home at night. And the hundreds of “tiles” attached to the doorhead naturally form a “eaves” above everyone’s head in the sunlight, helping you shelter from the wind and rain. These forms that change with time make up the first interface for Yanxuan to “greet” the community.
The designer used five “big trees” to support the indoor scene, everything is in this forest. In addition to the consistently high-quality Yanxuan products, this store has a heartwarming theme – product poverty alleviation. As a display window for social events, it radiates not only the surrounding community, but also care for a wide range of vulnerable groups in society.
The left side of the space is a heavy-experience community concept kitchen. The basis of selection here is your deep experience after using the product. At the same time, the space is shaped into the shape of a kitchen island, so that the experience during selection can be closer to everyone’s daily life.
Some ways, materials and lighting are the most important basis in space creation. Warm white 3500K color temperature, provides a pleasant indoor lighting environment for the sales area based on wood.
The arc-shaped bite of the wooden tiles, large-particle polished stone tiles and gray tiles on the floor, together with the ceiling shape, switch between different scenes, whether indoors or outdoors, or relaxed or interesting. Whether it’s adults or children, they can all find their passion here.
The designer tries to use the “tree”-centered store space to combine consumption, experience, and products. Products are consumed, appreciated, and experienced by users. It conveys the cultural value and lifestyle that the brand conveys, forming a moving scene in the store.
Project Information:
Space Name: NetEase Yanxuan New Retail Offline Experience Store
Space Type: Commercial Space, Retail Space, Experience Store
Space Address: 789 Nanjing West Road, Jing’an District, Shanghai, China; No. 168 Lujiazui West Road, Pudong New Area, Shanghai, China; No. 525 Sports Field Road, Xiacheng District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China;
Design Firm: XU Studio
Lead Designer: Jiang Yan, Xu Yijun
Design Team: Mao Jiajun, He Zhiwei, Dong Jiahui
Building Area: 200~320 square meters
Main Materials: Perforated aluminum plate, wood veneer, polished stone tiles, wood-grained tiles, gray tiles, emulsion paint
Photography Copyright: Huang Xiaojing
