The late autumn and early winter in Beijing are lazy and romantic: ginkgo trees are golden in the sunshine, maple leaves are red in color, and plane trees on both sides of the road are rustling in the wind.

In this most atmospheric season, a Paris corner coffee shop (Ami Cafe) recently quietly arrived in Sanlitun Taikoo Li, is the Ami brand opened the 2023 autumn and winter series pop-up store, Inject warm Parisian style into the continuously cooling Beijing and officially open the prelude of Ami's "Autumn and Winter China trip" - Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu three cities pop-up French cafe launched simultaneously.

Modeled after the iconic Parisian cafe, the pop-up store incorporates many classic elements of French cities: Ottoman architecture, Morris advertising pillars and open-air wicker chairs.

Bloggers, fashionistas and fashion lovers insist on clocking in offline even if they have to spend an hour in line to get coffee, and showing off their beautiful photos on social networks at the first time, causing a new wave of shop-hunting.

"Not France can not afford to go, but Sanlitun is more cost-effective" "to Paris, like Beijing" "one second across the streets of fa country", a young netizen said.

New ways to train future consumers

In recent years, the cross-border cooperation between fashion and coffee to open a limited-time pop-up store has become a popular trend.

Only in 2023, in addition to Ami, Maison Margiela, Louis Vuitton, Burberry and other fashion brands have opened pop-up coffee shops in Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other cities, attracting the attention of many young people.

Selling coffee is nothing new to the fashion industry. As early as 2015, Burberry has opened a cafe in London's Regent Street flagship store, Gucci has also provided coffee catering services in the brand's store in Shanghai World Trade... In the past, these coffee shops, which serve as complementary services in brand retail stores, were set up simply to allow customers, especially men, to stay longer in the stores.

But the now-popular coffee pop-up serves another purpose: to attract customers and potential customers to visit the store and create a larger marketing voice. Thomas Thompson, director of CBRE's commercial department, said that the practice of opening coffee pop-up stores is very valuable for brands to cultivate a young consumer audience, and with the pop-up event as a "introduction", many young consumers will notice the brand and attract them to spend money.

"Drainage" is the real purpose

Compared with the expensive brand single product pricing, is the fashion big name really putting down the price of selling more than 30 cups of coffee? In fact, the scene of dreaming back to Paris is created, and the precision of daily consumer goods is cut into... The brand is to cater to the consumption habits of young people, imperceptibly to its unique pioneer aesthetic and rich connotation of the brand story.

Take last year's Ralph's Coffee Truck limited time pop-up coffee truck in Wangfujing, Beijing, for example: the green pickup truck coupled with white snow, the driver is actually a cute doll bear wearing a POLO shirt, the truck as a whole is the strong American retro style of the fire, and it is easy to shoot American drama style.

People only need to spend 38 yuan to experience the "American dream" created by Ralph Lauren, as if crossing the streets of New York, attracting many consumers to hit the card, and many small red book bloggers' tweets are easily more than 1,000 likes.

This pop-up cafe with a significant experiential nature and a clear "punch" feature can be seen as the interpretation of "curated" retail in the fashion brand retail system. According to Vogue Business, coffee shops can quickly break the circle and pull exposure in a short time. For brands, in addition to "drainage", selling coffee can also bring a long stream of customers and provide additional VIP services for consumers. Especially in first-tier cities, coffee is a popular "social currency", with per capita coffee consumption reaching 326 cups per year.

In the reporter's view, the pop-up cafe can better form a marketing closed loop from offline to online, the French cafe with ubiquitous brand DNA can not only guide users to punch the card offline, show them new products, and can use the enthusiasm of users to punch the card to share the topic online, and then attract more user traffic and greater attention.

On the one hand, the pop-up store cycle is short, the need for labor, rent and other costs are lower, as long as the creativity is enough, its social communication effect and sales transformation are considerable, is a good way to use creativity to leverage sales. On the other hand, these ideas will continue to empower consumers' impression of the brand, so that consumers can see the younger image of the entire brand.

Nowadays, the whole market is very cautious about advertising and marketing, so pop-up stores that can give quick feedback and bring ROI are popular marketing methods.

But like all the marketing tactics in the fashion industry, homogenization is inevitable as more and more brands try to share a piece of the coffee pie. Whether it's Maison Margiela Cafe in Beijing, which has been on fire this summer, or Ralph's Coffee, which features American-style decor, they all have mixed reviews on social media.

In addition to the long queue, high price, high premium common bad reviews, there is another reason is that the coffee taste is too mediocre or even undrinkable. This also makes the coffee shop that should be used to improve the repetition rate and the purchase rate of goods completely become a one-time punching place and only selling brand Logo gimmicks, which is difficult to stand out in the highly competitive industry, and also affects the brand image in the long run, and it is difficult to achieve commercial transformation.

Therefore, for fashion brands, following the trend of fashion marketing to earn traffic is only a part, and ultimately through the brand product level itself innovation and quality improvement to form differentiation.