(Chinese Version)

　　Online retailing giant Amazon opened its first bookstore in Seattle half a year ago and just opened its ninth bookstore in San Francisco Bay Area recently. It is reported that Amazon chooses the location of bookstores and select books through big data analysis. Amazon’s attempt to turn online rating, commenting and recommendation algorithm offline amazed many people in the retailing industry, believing that such model represents the future of retailing.

　　Rumor has it that Amazon is set to open 400 offline bookstores, which helds even more people wondering if “the doom of traditional bookstores has come”.

　　Dangdang.com, one of the major Chinese online retailers, has opened 143 offline bookstores and plans to open 1,000 bookstores in total within the next three to five years. How should traditional offline bookstores react to the massive counterattack from online retailers’ offline bookstores? Despite the widespread appraisal of Amazon’s offline bookstores, we can’t help wondering if online retailers really could repeat their sales logic online in offline bookstores? Are online users and offline consumers the same?

　　Unfortunately, traditional bookstores that don’t have online big data and recommendation algorithm can do nothing but lament their own failure. Still, how can they maximize their advantages, achieve standardization, differentiation and good shopping experience at the same time and cope with the fierce competition from online retailers’ offline bookstores?

　　Sisyphe Bookstore, the biggest private-owned bookstore chain in China, may serve as a great example. This January, Sisyphe just opened a new bookstore in Blue Harbor, its first in Beijing, or 67th across China.

　　Jin Weizhu, chairman of Sisyphe Bookstore, told TMTpost that he never went to Sisyphe Bookstores to buy new books. Instead, he prefers to go to All Sages Bookstore, a bookstore near Wudaokou and known for social science books. Although it is Jin himself who designed the British-style gate, retro-style show window, guide maps, sign ribbons as well as “chicken soup” on the ground, his personal reading interest has nothing to do with the selection, classifying and displaying of books Sisyphe Bookstore.

　　Although Jin knew books very well and is often invited to serve as judges of “Best Ten Books of the Year”, he often decLines, saying that: “What’s so big deal about knowing books well? Do you know how the marketworks?”

　　If you often go to bookstores and are artsy and well-educated, you might not find Sisyphe’s books satisfying. The majority of books in Sisyphe Bookstores are too basic, and there are no short of chicken soups and silly romance stories. However, if you are just an ordinary reader and seldom read books, use Douban or follow closely the latest news of new books, you might be easily attracted by the British-style gate and café of Sisyphe and buy the first book you’ve ever bought after graduation.

　　The guide map on the ground inside Sisyphe Bookstore

　　Even if this is the first time you’ve ever entered a bookstore, you might find it easy to wander around, as if strolling an H&M, and find a book you are interested in.

　　As you are wandering around the bookstore, you may find the guide map carefully designed by Jin on the ground and lead you to the book you are so interested in. There’s a short intro to every sector of the bookstore and the transition is very smooth since different sectors are divided by topics. Taken into consideration of consumers’ understanding, a special book classification method is adopted here in Sisyphe Bookstores. For example, when you want to buy a recipe book, you don’t need to find it in the “Practical Technique: Cooking Skill” sector.

　　It is precisely due to a good understanding of general consumers’ mentality that Sisyphe Bookstore is designed in a way that can be called “fast fashion”. As a matter of fact, Sisyphe Bookstore’s “revenue per square meter” even reaches the average of a clothes store. “How can you continue if you can’t reach such level?” Jin said rhetorically.

　　All of these have to do with Sisyphe Bookstore’s positioning: fine books for the general public. To be exact, “fine books” doesn’t mean “advanced books”, but rather “the most appropriate books for its consumer group in each sector”.

　　“Which group of people are Sisyphe Bookstore’s target consumers? Certainly not artsy young people and elite readers in a city. For example, if there aren’t any bookstore in Blue Harbor, where SisypheBookstore’s first outlet in Beijing is located, people will also come here and go shopping; however, if there is a bookstore that looks nice and even has a coffee area inside, people might be convinced to come in and wander around for a while,” Jin explained. For Jin, his goal is to make a bookstore that an ordinary consumer would be willing to enter and buy one or two books.

　　Therefore, Sisyphe Bookstore’s target consumers are actually people who don’t read books and its goal is to convince them into buying books.