After launching in Qingdao last week, Gentle Monster opened a new flagship store in Beijing Taikoo Li Sanlitun South yesterday, which it describes as its largest in the world.
With a visual theme it calls “Dataized Future”, the store – which has three stories and a retail area larger than 1330sqm – replaces its previous outlet in Taikoo Li Sanlitun North District.
According to Gentle Monster, the new shop offers twice as many products and styles as other stores, and will be the first to provide free repair services in the market in Northern China. It also introduces exclusive collaborations or products ahead of time.
The area is covered with glass and in large-scale installations, images, and videos that extend all the way up to the third floor, which is dedicated to optical goods. Customers can talk to licensed optometrists there as well.
Close encounters in Qingdao
The company also debuted its Qingdao flagship store in Hisense Plaza last week. With “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” as the theme, the store design uses the primary colours red and black in an effort to convey what it describes as “the swing of reality and the unknown world in the non-linear horizontal axis”.
The store is installed with mirrors and screens and there is a gatekeeper at the end of the store to guard “the line between reality and the unknown”. Gentle Monster Qingdao aims to offer a futuristic setting that arouses a range of emotions and offers novel experiences outside of conventional retail settings.
Gentle Monster claims the flagship and its new features are part of its strategy to increase its market share in China, where it launched in 2016. The company has since opened 17 flagship stores in 14 cities across the country. It aspires to offer customers “novel retail experiences as well as motivate and enthuse the next generation of consumers”.
Hankook Kim established Gentle Monster in Seoul in 2011 with a design philosophy that ranges from the extraordinary to the understated. It also has stores in Singapore, Hong Kong, the US, and the UK.
