“If we don’t count textbooks and teaching materials, Chinese read less than one book on average every year. There’s a huge market out there,” Jin explained. Sisyphe Bookstore’s rapid expansion in second and third-tier cities proved Jin’s judgment.

　　Up till now, Sisyphe Bookstore already opened over 60 bookstores in most second-tier cities in South China. This new bookstore in Blue Harbor, Beijing, marks Sisyphe Bookstore’s march into first-tier cities. In fact, Sisyphe plans to open four bookstores in Beijing within 2017.

　　For Jin, the most important indicator is “number of customer arrivals”. As long as this figure reaches 1,000, Sisyphe Bookstore’s annual income can reach 5 million RMB.

　　Since the first Sisyphe Bookstore was opened in Shenzhen CocoPark, it has already made it clear that shopping malls would be its main “battleground”. However, Sisyphe Bookstore, in general, aren’t large and often covers less than 500 square meters. “500 square meters is enough to run a super-efficient and well-functioning bookstore,” he said.

　　For Jin, to achieve high “revenue per square meter”, there’s no use to appeal to customers’ emotional needs. The only way to succeed is to apply retailing tricks to book-selling.

　　“Many people who left Sisyphe and turned to movie theatre business would tell me that it is a lot easier than book-selling,” Jin told TMTpost that book-selling is the most difficult business in retailing.

　　How come? This may have to do with the unique features of books.

　　Above all, if each book counts as one SKU, then the total SKU in a 500-square-meter bookstore can reach over 280,000. Moreover, the content of books can’t be directly conveyed to consumers, since it takes time and effort to read texts and understand a book.

　　While Amazon is simply opening offline outlets of its “online bookstore” one after another and displaying best-selling and high-ranking books online in offline bookstores, Sisyphe Bookstore, with an SKU of over 280,000 each and targeting the general public, aims to do a lot more.

　　Sisyphe Bookstore not only has to create better shopping experience than online bookstores, but also learn from online recommendation algorithm. After all, you can’t expect to be guided by “reading guide maps” or have a special “Parent-Kid Reading Space” when shopping on Dangdang.com or Amazon. Another “trick” Jin learns from online bookstores is adding several tags to a book. Therefore, books are better linked together inside bookstores, compared with traditional book classification system,

　　That’s why Sisyphe Bookstore has a special book analysis team. Different from books recommended by artsy bookstores such as MUJI Bookstore, which are typically based on bookstore owners’ own reading interests, Sisyphe’s books are selected based on a thorough analysis of books’ features and consumers’ preferences.

　　However, better shopping experience can’t be standardized and massively reproducible, and isn’t enough to ensure high shopping efficiency.

　　To turn the entire bookstore into an efficient and reproducible “selling machine”, Sisyphe Bookstore focuses much of its effort on aspects most customers aren’t aware of. For example, there are nineteen professional systems and three numerical control models behind Sisyphe Bookstore.

　　Through its special book selection and control model, the team would first conduct a model analysis of target customers’ reading habit and affordability. Then, since books are classified through different tags, the team will decide to purchase which books and select which books in which bookstores. Every three months, the model will be slightly adjusted based on the change of the target customers and the compatibility between customers and books.

　　Through traffic control model, each book is carefully displayed based on its sales pattern, so old books will constantly be replaced by new ones.

　　Storage adjustment modeldeals with the biggest headache of any offline bookstore: inventory turnover. To maximize inventory efficiency, inventory of all Sisyphe Bookstores are managed as a total.

　　With all these models, Sisyphe Bookstore is able to achieve profitability simply through book-selling. As a matter of fact, book-selling accounts for 78 per cent of Sisyphe’s income, and all its new bookstores can achieve profitability within one year they are opened.