This article comes from WeChat Public number: RET Ruiyi De (ID: retweixin) , the original title: “Ski fever in shopping malls is spreading. What kind of customers are supporting snow and ice consumption?” “, The title picture comes from: Vision Perspective China

Ice and snow sports have grown rapidly in recent years, jumping from niche sports to becoming one of the most popular sports for middle-class families. The arrival of the Winter Olympics in 2022 will also set off another peak of ice and snow sports.

Compared to regions where global snow and ice sports are more developed, the domestic market still has a lot of room for development, and shopping malls have also become a natural extension of this sport.

So, is the consumer group of ice and snow sports coincided with the shopping center, and how should the shopping center take over this huge market? How to increase the conversion of other sports formats in the field?

01, the next 10 years will be a period of rapid growth in snow and ice sports

In the past year or two, we can observe that the formats related to ice and snow sports in shopping malls have gradually become richer, especially in second-tier cities, the formats of ice and snow sports, clothing, equipment, and training have increased significantly.

Behind this phenomenon is not only the widening of people’s choice of sports methods, but also the influence of world-class sports events and national policies. With the approach of the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, the government has issued a policy to encourage “300 million people to participate in ice and snow sports”.The heat of a sport has peaked.

This popularity is directly reflected in the landing scene of snow and ice sports. In the three landing scenes of ski resorts, shopping centers, and snow and snow training, resorts alone have increased the number by 5 times compared to 5 years ago.

In fact, by placing the domestic ice and snow industry on global coordinates, you will find that the domestic ice and snow sports market has a lot of room for improvement compared with the developed countries such as the US, Japan, and France.

In the case of uneven distribution of domestic natural resources, outdoor snow and ice sports across the region and all seasons are difficult to achieve, and this just provides space for the development of indoor snow and ice sports. As one of the important commercial places that can undertake ice and snow sports, the shopping mall faces a huge opportunity.

02, what are the similarities between snow sports consumer groups and shopping centers?

Before the outbreak, ice and snow sports belonged to “niche sports” and had high barriers to participation. On the one hand, because of its competitive nature, especially for skiing, skating and other sports pursuit of speed and skill, breakthroughs, with the attributes of extreme sports; The price is on the high side.

So, what kind of crowd supports the ice and snow sports market? In response, RET’s strategic advisory department outlined the portraits of snow and ice sports consumers by investigating ski resorts around Beijing.

1. What type of customer base supports the ice and snow sports market?

Rejuvenation is the most obvious feature of snow and ice sports. More than half of the skiers are men, mainly in the middle-to-high consumer group aged 24 to 35. Secondly, family groups cannot be ignored, with more than half of the family of two or three.

For these people, ice and snow sports are both sports and leisure, and quality and enjoyment are their keywords.

2. In addition to snow and ice consumption, what other business transformations can it bring?

The survey conducted by RET’s strategic advisory department found that the preferences of snow and ice sports crowds are very typical among urban middle-class families. In the process of snow and ice sports, they are eager to see more cultural formats, boutique retail facilities and Child format.

If the shopping mall itself has a rich format extension, it can fully undertake the conversion of ice and snow sports consumers in the venue, which will have a better promotion effect on the overall operation.

3. What kinds of scenes can the shopping center provide?

The ice and snow sports format can be said to be a special format in the shopping mall. Its appearance not only has the rapid development of the ice and snow market, but also has its own development track in the scene of the shopping center.

The shopping mall’s special sports format has transitioned from popular projects such as ice rinks that appeared about 15 years ago to niche projects such as rock climbing, archery, skiing, and ice hockey. Currently, this type of business has transitioned to indoor skiing.

Speaking of ski projects, most shopping malls are currently unable to create ski resorts due to physical space constraints, but ski simulators. This situation has created a group of merchants with strong brand power. Under the condition of relatively controllable investment and meeting the needs of some consumers, they are welcome in shopping malls.

Indoor simulated skiing

Of course, in an era where entertainment and leisure are becoming more and more important, some large domestic projects have begun to build ski resorts. These ski resorts draw more on many foreign experiences, such as Ski Dubai in the Mall of the Emirates, Mall of America and Big Snow in the newly opened Ameircan Dream.

The characteristics of these shopping center ski resorts is to maximize the indoor outdoor sports, and create a “dream world” where adults and children can participate indoors.

03. Create an indoor “fantasy world”, how can snow and ice sports improve the conversion in the field.

Ice-snow sports belong to strong-purpose formats in shopping malls, and large-scale ice-snow formats are often the main store in a shopping mall.The “revisit rate” of ice and snow sports, and the transformation of other formats on the venue, have become the focus of shopping center operators’ thinking.

So what inspirations do internationally renowned skiing projects bring to us?

Create feature labels and contextual supplements to avoid homogeneous formats

Take the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai as an example. Its indoor ski area, Ski Dubai, covers an area of ​​22,500 square meters, including 5 400-meter-long ski slopes. Among them, the black diamond slopes have created a global indoor advanced The precedent was once the world’s largest indoor ice and snow sports venue.

Ski Dubai

Ski Dubai’s project attributes are mainly tourists and shopping, creating one store and one feature. Under the condition of high repetitiveness of business categories, create unique commercial labels, such as unique old-fashioned candy shops, viewing theme restaurants, Sega Children’s playground, etc.

These specialty businesses around Ski Dubai complement the main store ’s good scenes and form a cyclic interaction with the main store ’s customer flow.

Creating a scarce facility experience, focusing on guiding the flow of movement

For commercial entities with strong physical space conditions, in addition to the format, they can also work on the building for ice and snow sports. The Koutalaki project in Finland chose to innovate on the roof.

Koutalaki is located in Lapland, northern Finland. It is a complex of business, hotel and office. It consists of 4 buildings. The natural conditions in Lapland provide abundant ski resources. To make skiing fun, Koutalaki’s 4 buildings are almostEqual height, the roof of each building is connected to the ground through a slope to form a ski slope.

Koutalaki

The roof is a malleable space for snow and ice sports. It can not only provide enough height difference for snow and ice sports in the vertical direction, eliminate the space depression feeling of indoor snow and ice sports, but also trigger consumers in shopping malls Vertical flow.

What’s different from Koutalaki is the rooftop ski slope transformed by Amager Bakke, a power station in Copenhagen, Denmark. The slope between the top of the Amager Bakke and the ground is divided into several multi-purpose ski tracks, which can also be used for dry snow in summer. In the densely populated Danish capital, Amager Bakke introduced skiing supporting businesses such as restaurants and cafés at the bottom, so that people in the city can also easily access skiing projects as a national sport in the Nordic countries.

—— Although these projects have unique advantages in terms of natural and architectural conditions, the addition of distinctive format scenarios, full consideration of the flow of people in the venue, and the planning of summer operation modes can all introduce shopping malls. Inspiring when snow sports.

Summary

Under the overall trend of consumption upgrading society, ice and snow sports are experiencing a development process that penetrates from first-tier cities to second-tier cities and extends from niche to the general public.

Similar to skiing, surfing, equestrian, ice hockey and other sports with the “elite” and “trend” labels have appeared in shopping centers in recent years. This is the sinking popularity of the elite movement to the general public, and it is the expansion of people’s good life in the business scene.

The popularity of snow and ice sports also means the development of diversified and personalized formats. How to provide consumers with more “dreamy” services and scenarios is shopping.Topics that center operators should keep thinking about.

This article is from WeChat public account: RET Ruiyi De (ID: retweixin)