900 first stores, 290 billion yuan in sales achieved through trade-in, Beijing shows the report card for the construction of the international consumption center city in 2024

On the first day of 2025, Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce released the achievements of cultivating and building an international consumer center city in 2024: 900 flagship stores were established, bringing the total number of time-honored Chinese brands to 137, ranking second in the country; the area of newly opened large-scale commercial facilities exceeded 1.5 million square meters; the sales were driven by the policy of replacing old with new, exceeding 29 billion yuan; and 12 demonstration cases were selected for the innovative measures of cultivating and building international consumer center cities by the Ministry of Commerce…

Diverse development of domestic consumer brands

As a representative of Beijing’s time-honored brands, Beijing Daoxiangcun is updating its products at an increasingly fast pace. Consumers use a small spoon to gently crush the crispy pastry, revealing pastry snacks in the shape of bronze utensils such as ‘ding’, ‘gui’, and ‘zun’ related to food and drink. Through playing with the pastry layers, they can learn about traditional food culture. This is the newly launched ‘Treasure Hunt Hall’ of Beijing Daoxiangcun on the central axis of Beijing. The store not only displays various food culture exhibits but also caters to the curiosity of young people in its products.

“Beijing Daoxiangcun Zero Store, one store one theme, one store one culture, using themes as the starting point to create more scenarized stores. The innovation of store scenes can attract a more diverse range of consumers,” said Shi Yan, deputy general manager of Beijing Daoxiangcun. With a century-old history, traditional Chinese time-honored brand can only survive in the intense market competition by continuous innovation.

At the Tianfu Hao store on Qianmen Street, which is also innovative, the emphasis is on cultural and creative products and packaging products with Beijing elements and logos. These products have the attribute of “Beijing’s gifts”, which is more attractive to tourists. It is understood that sales to non-local tourists account for 60% of the total sales of the store. With the changes in China’s visa-free policy, the number of tourists on Qianmen Street continues to increase, and the flow of customers entering the store has also increased by about 20% compared to 2019.

Whether it’s store innovation or product innovation, the construction of Beijing as an international consumer center city has provided new ideas and opportunities for the development and expansion of time-honored brands. Nowadays, when Chinese and foreign tourists travel to Beijing, the must-have souvenir is the innovative products of time-honored brands. A survey conducted by Beijing Business Daily found that many classic products from Beijing’s Daoxiangcun, Wuyutai, Tianfu Hao, and other time-honored brands have become the essential gifts for tourists to bring back home, and the new products of time-honored brands have become the key attraction.

As an important embodiment of the urban core, time-honored brands handed in a satisfactory report card in 2024. Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce, together with eight departments, issued an action plan to promote the innovative development of time-honored brands, promoting the protection, inheritance, innovation, and development of time-honored brands through ten major actions and 30 specific measures. In 2024, Beijing has a total of 137 Chinese time-honored brands, ranking second in the country.

In addition to well-established brands, the establishment of the first store in Beijing can enrich the market supply and enhance market activity. According to Beijing Business Daily, the Guidelines for the Application of the First Store Project of Commercial Brands, which encourages the development of commercial brands, was issued in Beijing in 2024. With the support of policies, it has led to the establishment of 900 first stores, including many international and local brands.

Recently, at the 2024 Beijing Business Forum, the annual survey report “2024 Beijing Business Development Blue Book” released by Beijing Business Daily pointed out that the concept of flagship stores is showing a trend of segmentation, with significant improvements in brand quality and store levels in 2024. In 2024, the first Louis Vuitton home space in China landed in Guomao Shopping Mall with a total area of 200 square meters; Titleist welcomed the first flagship brand experience store in Beijing nationwide; Tom Ford’s first flagship store in China settled in Guomao Shopping Mall.

Driving Consumption with Trade-in

In 2024, a post about how residents in Beijing can save money when buying home appliances has prompted many hesitant citizens to upgrade their appliances. According to the Beijing municipal government’s policy on trading in old items for new ones, residents can receive subsidies when purchasing items ranging from computers, air conditioners, and household stoves to cars, whether by trading in old items or buying new ones directly.

The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce released data showing that the subsidy policy for replacing old with new is expected to drive sales by over 29 billion yuan, with retail sales of new energy vehicles and household appliances increasing by 25.5% and 9.2% respectively.

Marketplace sales, entering street communities, mobile stations, setting up online zones… In order to facilitate citizens to enjoy the benefits of the old-for-new policy, Beijing has organized various channels for participating enterprises to reach the doorsteps of citizens and stimulate the demand for new products. Beijing continues to expand the scope of enterprise participation. At present, the subsidies for old-for-new basically cover major online platforms such as JD.com, Suning, Lenovo, Xiaomi Mall, as well as more than 300 offline stores, achieving full coverage of online and offline areas in Beijing. By setting up the ‘Beijing Old-for-New Appliances Zone’ on online platforms and organizing community-based appliance-themed markets, citizens can participate in the old-for-new activities at their ‘doorsteps’ and on their mobile phones.

The Central Economic Work Conference held recently listed ‘vigorously boosting consumption, improving investment efficiency, and comprehensively expanding domestic demand’ as the top priority among the nine key tasks for 2025. It proposes to ‘implement a special action to boost consumption’, ‘increase efforts to implement the ‘Two New’ policies on a broader scale’, and ‘provide greater support for ‘Two Heavy’ projects’. Beijing Business Daily noticed that some home appliance sales companies have already started booking subsidies for replacing old products with new ones in 2025.

The consumer environment continues to improve.

Visiting Tan Valley to see snow, drink coffee, and explore the so real universe theme park has become a new shopping choice for many residents of Beijing and even the surrounding areas to experience high technology. Currently, Beijing has formed seven major scenes including districts, events, performances, near mountains, near water, nighttime, and digital, with more than 100 typical commercial projects. The diversification and fashion of consumption in Beijing is due to the action plan to promote diversified consumption integration issued by the Beijing Municipal Government.

In addition to increasing consumer supply and promoting policy subsidies from multiple perspectives, the consumption and business environment in Beijing is also continuously upgrading. The frequency of large-scale events and performances in Beijing is increasing, and in order to promote the integration of culture, commerce, tourism, and sports consumption, Beijing has established a comprehensive service guarantee coordination mechanism for large-scale activities such as performances, events, and exhibitions, reducing the processing time by over 80%. In 2024, Beijing’s 9 professional exhibition venues with an area of over 10,000 square meters will host 289 events of various types, an increase of 24% year-on-year. The facilities of Beijing’s exhibition venues are gradually being improved, and their carrying capacity will be greatly enhanced.

The online retail sales with acceleration accounted for more than 40% of the total social retail sales in Beijing this year, setting a new historical record; For the emerging live-streaming e-commerce, Beijing has identified the second batch of 13 ‘Beijing Specialized Live-streaming E-commerce Bases’ by 2024, and introduced policies to support the development of cross-border e-commerce, enabling more live-streaming e-commerce and cross-border e-commerce focusing on quality services to take root in Beijing and share the huge international consumer market in Beijing.

In addition, the number of international tourists visiting Beijing has been gradually increasing, providing new space for consumption growth in Beijing. It is reported that currently 15,000 key merchants in Beijing have achieved full coverage of accepting foreign cards, with 1,128 tax refund shops for departing tourists, ranking first among cities in China, and the number of inbound tourists has doubled compared to the same period last year.

Behind these numbers, it is evident that Beijing has undergone significant changes in cultivating and constructing an international consumption center city over the past three years. There are new landmarks, new brands, renewed services, empowerment updates, and environmental innovations. In 2024, Beijing had 12 exemplary cases selected by the Ministry of Commerce for its “Innovative Measures for Cultivating and Constructing International Consumption Center Cities”.

As Park Xuedong, Secretary of the Party Group and Director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce, pointed out at the 2024 Beijing Business Forum and the 20th Beijing Top Ten Business Brands Awards Ceremony, the 2024 Beijing Consumption Season will build a ‘1+17+14+N’ activity framework throughout the year, focusing on 14 characteristic themes such as catering consumption, holiday consumption, and fashion consumption, achieving ‘scenes every week, highlights every month, themes every season, and results throughout the year’. Beijing’s commerce is showing a prosperous development trend.

The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Commerce stated that by 2025, Beijing will thoroughly implement the spirit of the Central Economic Work Conference, take the cultivation and construction of an international consumer center city as the overall starting point, coordinate the expansion of domestic demand and the deepening of supply-side structural reforms, coordinate effective markets and capable government, strive to meet the needs of the people for a better life, and better promote high-quality economic development in the capital.

(Source: Beijing Business Daily)

Source: East Money

Author: Beijing Business Daily