'Future-Oriented Large Mart' Emart Yeonsu Branch... Jung Yong-jin "Buying Customers' Time"

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A housewife, Ms. A, residing in Songdo, Incheon, plans to visit the Emart Yeonsu branch on the 4th to do some grocery shopping. She intends to stop by the grocery section in the store to buy vegetables directly grown by Emart to serve at her children's table. Meat is indispensable on the children's table. The livestock section at Emart Yeonsu features a large 30-meter showcase where refrigerated meat products can be viewed at a glance. She can choose from hard-to-find items in the market such as Duroc pork, Hwaseok Hanwoo beef, and Tomahawk steaks that are aged and sold directly. Ms. A is also considering chicken as a snack for her children?fried chicken cooked by a robot at the ready-to-cook corner.

Ms. A is also a fan of the professional baseball team SSG Landers, which is based in Incheon. Until now, she used to buy player uniforms by visiting the stadium, but now she uses the 'Landers Goods Shop' located in the basement of Emart Yeonsu. The Landers Plaza on the first floor of the store, which recreates the players' locker room of the Incheon Landers Field baseball stadium, has become a must-visit spot for Ms. A. It displays uniforms, bats, gloves, posters, and other items of 12 SSG Landers players. The photo card kiosk and memory zone from Landers Field have also been relocated here.

On the afternoon of the 3rd, various vegetables were displayed at the indoor smart farm vegetable sales booth at the newly renovated Emart Yeonsu branch in Yeonsu-gu, Incheon.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

Opened in 2002, Emart Yeonsu has transformed into a mall-type futuristic store. To maximize the competitiveness of offline stores amid rapidly changing distribution environments, the store underwent a six-month long project to reorganize its space and products and reopened on the 30th of last month.

Emart Yeonsu reduced its main store space from 12,561㎡ (3,800 pyeong) to 5,619㎡ (1,600 pyeong). Instead, the size of specialty stores and leased shops nearly doubled from 5,950㎡ (1,800 pyeong) to 11,570㎡ (3,500 pyeong). The space previously dedicated to grocery shopping was expanded into a complex area for dining, leisure, and cultural activities.

The main store space expanded the grocery section by 430㎡ (130 pyeong) compared to before, leveraging the strengths of offline marts. Smart farms and large livestock showcases were installed so customers can directly check the quality of food products. Unique attractions include tuna cutting shows held at the seafood section and a robot frying chicken at the ready-to-cook corner.

On the afternoon of the 3rd, the newly renovated entrance doors of Emart Yeonsu Branch in Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, were wide open.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

The leased spaces were filled with popular restaurants and experiential facilities. According to Emart, Yeonsu has a total of 82 leased shops, the second highest after Emart Town Wolgye branch (92 shops). Among them are 25 famous restaurants located in Incheon as well as in Seoul’s Seongsu-dong and Suwon’s Haenggung-dong.

Representative experiential facilities include the Landers Plaza, the kids’ cafe 'Bounce Children’s Park,' and the flower shop 'Flower Marche.' Emart explained that these choices reflect the regional characteristics where families in their 30s and 40s with children under 9 years old make up a high proportion of the population.

The changes have been successful so far. Both sales and the number of visitors increased during the first month after the renovation. Sales rose by about 18% compared to the same period last year, and the number of visitors increased by 23%. Despite the reduction in the main store area, the grocery section, which offers many attractions such as the smart farm, showed particularly strong sales. Deli sales increased by 48%, followed by vegetables (20%), seafood (23%), processed foods (13%), and livestock (13%), showing a balanced rise.

Jung Yong-jin, Vice Chairman of Shinsegae, is moving to the newly renovated sales booth at the Emart Yeonsu branch in Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, on the afternoon of the 3rd.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

On the afternoon of the 3rd, Chung Yong-jin, Vice Chairman of Shinsegae, who visited Yeonsu as part of on-site management, said, "Emart will change from a place where customers go to buy things to a place where they spend time." He added, "Yeonsu was renewed from this perspective." After touring the store, he said, "Just because the online market has become important doesn’t mean offline is unimportant. To maintain overwhelming dominance among offline stores, transforming Yeonsu like this was a necessary investment, and we will continue to invest more in the future."

This approach differs from that of Walmart, the leading large-scale American retailer that Chung considers a role model for Emart. According to academia, Walmart is reducing its main store space and increasing leased store areas to counter the threat from Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer that expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the future-oriented mart model pursued by Emart, which includes experiential facilities such as sportainment (a combination of sports and entertainment) and complex shopping malls, is considered a rare case worldwide. Chung’s New Year’s message that "Our goal is not to be the second Walmart or the second Amazon, but the first Shinsegae" is becoming a reality.

Emart plans to invest 85 billion KRW this year in renovating about 10 stores, starting with Yeonsu. The Emart Town KINTEX branch is preparing to reopen in July. Emart CEO Kang Hee-seok emphasized, "We will continue to introduce innovative stores to satisfy customers’ desires for differentiated experiences."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.