China’s prime ShanZhai shopping street under construction

Roadwork and huge construction sites are a normal sight if you walk the streets of China these days. Shenzhen, the heart of Chinese electronic industry is no exception to this rule. High rise buildings, new high-speed railway stations are being built throughout the city. Now heavy roadwork has hit Shenzhen’s prime electronics and ShanZhai shopping street: HuaQiangBei street. But while the this narrows the sidewalks and makes it difficult to cross the street customers continue to come by in search of electronic components or new mobile devices.

Leaving aside the construction sites one could get the impression that everything is just normal here. But being the glass and metal walls of the shop buildings another change seems to be going on. One trend is certainly the increasing number of “flagship” stores along the street. They sell phones of established and uprising brands like Meizu, Zopo, THL and Jiaju. Most of these shops are no larger than a garage for a medium-sized car but the can be crowded with customers if new models are up or prices are down.

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Besides the brand stores also larger stores are becoming popular along with a change in concept. Traditionally a Chinese phone mall would consist of hundreds of small booths, each of them selling more or less the same limited product range, displaying their goods in glass counters. This is very different from the concept that is usually found in western electronics stores. They are bigger, have a broader product range with many brands and work on a much larger store area. Many phones are ready to see and to test. Exactly this concept now makes its way onto HuaQiangBei street as the image below shows.

Obviously not only the bulldozers on the streets mark the changes to Shenzhen’s mobile phone shopping street. It remains to be seen if this change will be well accepted in a time where more and more customers use internet shops to buy their next smartphone. We will keep you updated on news from this scene.

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