"Lotte Mart Opens 2nd Zeta Plex Store as a Landmark in Gangbuk"

Lotte Mart Flagship Store
'Zeta Flex Seoul Station Branch' Opens

85% Grocery Store on 2nd Floor
Reflecting Customer Characteristics... Lunchbox & Foreigner Specialty Zones

Wine Megashop 'Bottle Bunker' 4th Branch
Catch Tini Ping Store Inside Toys "R" Us

Lotte Mart Seoul Station branch will reopen as Lotte Mart's future-oriented store, 'Zetta Plex Seoul Station branch,' on the 14th. Zetta Plex, Lotte Mart's flagship brand, is a compound word combining Zetta (ZETTA), representing 10 to the power of 21, and Plex (PLEX), meaning a combined space, signifying a space that offers customers numerous services and experiences.

Customers are shopping at the newly renovated Lotte Mart 'Zeta Flex Seoul Station Branch'
[Photo by Lotte Mart].

Zetta Plex Seoul Station branch is the second Zetta Plex store launched based on the success of Zetta Plex Jamsil branch, which opened in December 2021. Zetta Plex Jamsil branch, with the concept of "If it's not here, it's nowhere," offers over 30% more product items compared to regular stores, a fresh store rich in seasonality, and various specialty stores by product category, including the mega wine shop 'Bottle Bunker,' establishing itself as Lotte Mart's future-oriented store representing the Gangnam commercial district in Seoul.

Lotte Mart aims to transform the Seoul Station branch, located at the gateway and center of Seoul, into a future-oriented store, Zetta Plex, that consolidates retail experience and expertise, making it a landmark in the northern Seoul commercial district. The Seoul Station branch had a foreign customer sales ratio of about 30% year-to-date this year, and about 50% before COVID-19. Lotte Mart emphasized, "Through the large-scale renewal of Zetta Plex Seoul Station branch, we have gathered all the values we can offer customers so that Lotte Mart can continuously be loved not only by domestic customers but also by foreign customers as a representative Korean brand."

Expanded Fresh Food... Strengthened Specialty Stores for Wine, Pets, and Toys

Zetta Plex Seoul Station branch underwent a renewal focusing on transforming into a grocery specialty store, the strength of offline hypermarkets, while enhancing experiential content led by specialty stores such as wine, pets, and toys, and reorganizing customer-tailored spaces and products. The second floor of the store is a one-stop mart shopping space centered on groceries, and the third floor consists of content specialty stores such as Bottle Bunker and Toys "R" Us, as well as tenants, clearly distinguishing the concept by floor to improve customer shopping convenience.

85% of the second floor area is composed of grocery stores, increasing the grocery store size by about 25% compared to before the renewal. The grocery store, which was previously 3,748㎡ (about 1,134 pyeong), was expanded by 1,078㎡ (about 326 pyeong) to 4,826㎡ (about 1,460 pyeong). Compared to Lotte Mart's regular stores, which allocate space in a 7:3 ratio between food and non-food stores, much more space was dedicated to grocery stores.

Customers are shopping at the newly renovated Lotte Mart 'Zeta Flex Seoul Station Branch'
[Photo by Lotte Mart].

The expanded grocery store handles about 30% more items than general hypermarkets and is organized into a fresh store where freshness can be vividly felt, a ready-to-eat store pursuing perfect gourmet quality, and a processed food store offering customized curation by customer type.

The fresh store expanded its premium and eco-friendly product assortment considering the high-income commercial districts of Jung-gu and Yongsan-gu compared to the national average. The agricultural products section introduced 'RE:EARTH,' composed of eco-friendly fruits and vegetables. It is a space consisting of about 20 premium fruits and vegetables certified as low-carbon, organic, and pesticide-free. Utilizing Lotte Mart's ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) brand RE:AL, it enhances the eco-friendly image. The 'Local Food Zone,' which handles locally produced agricultural products harvested on the same day, further enhances the freshness of the agricultural products section.

The livestock section installed a wet-aging showcase, selling aged Hanwoo beef whose flavor is enhanced through wet low-temperature aging directly in the store, and also offers 'Full Blood Wagyu,' the top 0.5% purebred Wagyu breed, increasing premium meat options. The seafood section newly operates a 'Live Seafood' zone where customers can find live abalone and crab species (lobster, king crab, snow crab) all year round.

In the deli section, Lotte Mart plans to open its own bakery brand 'Pungmiso' in early October, offering signature products exclusive to Lotte Mart. It will sell about 40 bakery items, including 'Traditional French Baguette,' made with French flour from the birthplace of baguettes and traditional double fermentation, and 'Pure Milk Bread,' containing 30% first-grade pure milk without a drop of water, which are hard to find in typical hypermarkets.

Zetta Plex Seoul Station branch attracts not only general customers but also foreign customers and those working in nearby shops and offices. Accordingly, new customized specialty zones by customer type were established. Representative examples are the 'Cooking Dosirak Specialty Zone' in the ready-to-eat store and the 'Foreign Customer Specialty Zone' in the processed food store.

The Dosirak (lunchbox) specialty zone is a customized space for office workers and railway users. Here, customers can find about 70 types of lunchboxes ranging from simple gimbap lunchboxes to extremely cost-effective lunchboxes, premium full-course lunchboxes, and differentiated Japanese-style lunchboxes. This is more than 60% more lunchbox items than Lotte Mart's regular stores. Popular exclusive products launched only at the Seoul Station branch will be expanded to all stores based on customer response.

A 20-meter-long foreign customer specialty zone is also operated. It gathers popular items within food categories such as snacks, coffee, and nuts, which foreign customers frequently purchase, allowing customers to see popular products at a glance without searching throughout the store.

Additionally, Lotte Mart maximized shopping convenience by analyzing customer purchase patterns and optimizing the shopping space from traffic flow to fixture height. Before the renewal, fresh and processed product sections frequented by domestic and foreign customers were concentrated around the checkout area, causing high congestion. During this renewal, preferred categories by customer type were analyzed and completely rearranged to minimize overlapping traffic flow. Display shelves taller than 2 meters, which were considered to hinder shopping convenience and visibility, were lowered by 30 cm from 2.10 m to 1.80 m.

Customers are shopping at the newly renovated Lotte Mart 'Zeta Flex Seoul Station Branch'
[Photo by Lotte Mart].

Bottle Bunker, Toys "R" Us, Korean Culture Product Hall... 'Enhanced Experiential Content'

Zetta Plex Seoul Station branch introduces various specialty stores to satisfy customers' diverse tastes. On the third floor, the 4th Bottle Bunker branch opened, offering a mega wine curation shop under the concept of 'discovering your own wine taste,' providing total wine services. A curation zone is placed at the store entrance to create a space for wine beginners, and as customers move deeper into the store, products and content with increased expertise and experience in wine are arranged. The curation zone maintains three themes: 'Seasonal,' 'Food Pairing,' and 'Moment,' and adds a new theme called 'Wine Navigation,' which helps customers find products matching their taste through a Q&A using tablet PCs among over 4,000 wines, providing a new experience. An additional differentiated element is 'Wine & Play,' a music and wine pairing recommendation content, offering a service where customers can listen to music on tablets and purchase recommended wines.

The toy specialty store 'Toys "R" Us' and pet specialty store 'Collioli' are also introduced. Toys "R" Us Seoul Station branch is composed not just as a toy store but as a character specialty shop, featuring Sanrio Market, Pok?mon Zone, and Catch Tinyping Store. It also opens the largest Nintendo specialty store in a hypermarket, becoming a character content specialty space that excites fans. Collioli is stocked with trending items such as 'Dog Wine' and 'Dog Beer,' as well as pet insurance products and pet-exclusive electronics.

The health & beauty (H&B) specialty store 'LOHB's Plus' is located on the second floor. While maintaining the existing LOHB's Plus concept with a high proportion of anti-aging cosmetics and health functional foods, it significantly strengthened K-beauty products tailored to the Seoul Station branch's many foreign customers. Popular brands among foreign customers such as 'Chosun Beauty,' 'VT,' and 'Witch Factory' were newly introduced, and the proportion of mask packs, cleansing, and teeth whitening products was increased, upgrading it to a one-stop K-beauty shopping space.

For the first time in a hypermarket, a Korean Culture Product Hall called 'Bomeul' is operated to promote the beauty of Korea. The store is designed with a gallery concept and composed of products that reinterpret traditional Korean culture in a modern way, allowing customers to indirectly experience Korean traditional culture without visiting palaces or museums. Lotte Mart plans to enhance the uniqueness of Zetta Plex Seoul Station branch through the operation of the Korean Culture Product Hall and support the promotion and market expansion of traditional culture artists.

Kang Sung-hyun, CEO of Lotte Mart & Super, said, "As the second Zetta Plex store located at Seoul Station, the gateway of Korea, it is an important space to showcase the future-oriented store that Lotte Mart pursues to both domestic and international customers." He added, "Since it consolidates the company's capabilities, we expect it to provide the best shopping experience to all customers and become a landmark representing not only northern Seoul but also Korea."

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