O2O center brings new shopping experiences

Haixuan.com, one of China's largest B2C (business-to-customer) online retailers headquartered in Beijing, opened an offline experience center in the city of Guiyang's Comprehensive Bonded Area, in Guizhou province, on June 3, with more than 5,000 types of products from Korea, France, Italy and the United States, including food, cosmetics, clothing and accessories.

Haixuan.com, one of China's largest B2C (business-to-customer)online retailers headquartered in Beijing, opened an offline experience center in the city of Guiyang's Comprehensive Bonded Area, in Guizhou province, on June 3. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

Each product has its own QR code, so visitors can use their mobile phones to scan the code for simple ordering and the goods will be sent to the addresses they give.

One visitor commented, "I'm an old customer and like this e-shopping site since I can always get overseas goods at a cheaper price. There is one weakness in online shopping, however since I can only choose a product based on the photo and comments so the experience center is good since I can see the real thing."

Queuing up to get into Haixuan.com's O2O experience center.[Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

One Haixuan.com official explained the online to offline (O2O) experience center as a new shopping mode that they are still working with and added, "Traditional shops have a problem with high rent and complicated intermediaries that raise the product prices, but many people have less confidence in online shopping, though the price is lower. We believe that the O2O center is the way to solve the problems."

He went on to say that the site will open an even larger experience center in the city of Guangzhou's Baiyun International Airport, in Guangdong province, this August, on a 60,000-square–meter area.