Underground vendors in battle for survival
Print Edition
VENDORS at the city’s oldest underground shopping center are facing an uncertain future due to a surge in the popularity of online consumerism.
With more than 250 shops and stalls, Dmall, which sits beneath People’s Square, opened in the early 1990s and was once a popular haunt for young people in search of low-cost fashions and accessories.
In recent years, however, despite its prime location in the passageways that serve People’s Square Station — a stop on Metro lines 1, 2 and 8 — business at the mall has steadily dwindled.
“It’s getting harder to make a living here these days,” a stall owner surnamed Miao said yesterday.
“Before online shopping became popular it was so much easier,” he said.
“A lot of store owners became very wealthy and some of them made enough to buy apartments in the city. You couldn’t do that now,” he said.
A hat and scarf vendor at the mall, who asked not to be named, said she was planning to shut up shop in a few months’ time as business was so slow.
Like Miao, many store owners blamed the demise of their businesses on the spike in popularity of online shopping.
“We’ll never be popular as long as there are places like (online shopping platform) Taobao,” said another vendor who declined to give her name.
According to an official at the mall, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the number of people visiting the mall last year fell by about 50 percent.
And that’s all because people can get better deals online, a third unnamed vendor said.
“I sell mobile phone cases for 20 yuan, but you can get them online for just 15 yuan, including the delivery fee,” he said.
Although the mall would seem to have a good location, the opening of larger shops in other parts of the Metro labyrinth means that fewer people pass by Dmall these days, the vendor said.
In a bid to halt the downward slide, the center is set to undergo a face-lift, another unnamed official said.
The new-look center will seek to attract a new breed of shopper with more shops and a wider choice of places to eat, the person said.
The redevelopment is set to get under way later this year, he said.
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