Chinese retail giant Suning has launched a smart-retail experience centre in Nanjing.

The venue is the first of its kind for the brand, opening in Suning.com Plaza as an upgrade of the Suning.com flagship store and what it describes as a new benchmark for its strategic retail development. Offline shopping is “considered optional” in the store, and product experience is core to differentiating the concept from traditional shopping outlets.

The new flagship achieved a gross merchandise volume of RMB10 million (US$1.4 million) within 58 seconds of opening for trading and hit RMB100 million ($14 million) in just 13 hours.

According to a statement from the company, the store is conceived as a way to “accelerate the promotion of consumption, optimize consumption structure, and improve the quality of economic development”.

The new store will allow 24-hour sampling across all categories and consumers will be able to purchase products from a smart screen “virtual shelf”, providing an O2O channel that allows shopping experiences via internet tools such as applets, communities, and live streaming.

The store’s hi-tech showroom features a 400sqm L-shaped interactive LED screen, mainly reserved for product launches and PR events.

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