city’super specializes in premium products
Print Edition
SOME people living in a city like Shanghai are seeking a global lifestyle and are increasingly bored with local products. Enter city’super, a supermarket and retailer specializing in imported goods.
The Hong Kong-based company has opened two new outlets, city’super and Life by city’super, in iapm shopping mall on Huaihai Road. The group now has seven outlets in town.
“The two brands target different customers so the products they sell are distinctive,” says Yano Takaki, a company executive.
Takaki, born in Japan, has worked for city’super since 2001 and has been mainly involved in developing the Shanghai market.
He says city’super mainly targets housewives over 30 years old who have high food quality expectations. Life by city’super is geared toward office ladies aged between 20 and 30. It sells stationery items, fashion products, cosmetics, along with travel and photography accessories. The brand positions itself as a lifestyle provider.
“That’s why we don’t just provide food, but a wide range of related products from cookware to utensils,” Takaki says.
He says innovative retail thinking means taking into consideration the environment, products and service.
His team is dedicated to creating a warm and friendly shopping environment through proper lighting and cleanliness. Only products good enough to withstand the test of time qualify to be displayed on their shelves.
Highlights at the new city’super in iapm include traditional balsamic vinegars made by the Cavedoni family, one of the most respected producers in Italy, Belon oysters from Finistere, Britanny, sake from Japan brewed for five years at minus eight degrees Celsius, Spanish ham cored over years to perfection, and crabs from Ireland. An in-store bakery makes breads while a flower shop offers tailor-made floral bouquets.
Life by city’super has a bright and vivid ambience. It features vintage Polaroid cameras, LOMO fisheye lenses, as well as notebooks and postcards from all over the world.
Service is based on the idea of standing in a customer’s shoes and focusing on details. The new outlet is equipped with an open kitchen, where customers can take cooking classes and the Seafood Bar where the chef is ready to prepare seafood according to the recipe customers choose. Employees at their fresh food counter tell customers each product’s production date and best way to cook it, which makes it seem as though one is at a fresh market.
According to Takaki, city’super was founded in Hong Kong in 1996, when local lifestyles were changing from buying food at wet markets to pursuing more diversity and quality. Nowadays, City Super Group (city’super+LOG-ON/Life by city’super+cookedDeli) has 33 outlets in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Shanghai is currently its most important market. Internal surveys show that Shanghai consumers are outspending those in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
“Shanghai customers prefer Asian products, especially those from Japan, South Korea and China’s Taiwan. So we adjust our sourcing correspondingly. We also observe that people here, although not as Westernized as Hong Kong, are becoming more familiar with European products,” Takaki says.
The corporate office is localizing its buyer team in an effort to better understand local consuming habits and lifestyle trends.
City Super Group plans to open stores in the neighboring cities of Suzhou and Hangzhou in the next two years. In the long term, the company is looking to explore more widely and enter the cities such as Beijing and Chengdu, says Takaki.
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