Lotte Hi-Mart launches experiential store for young consumers

Showroom inside the experiential Hi-Mart store ‘The Nano Square’. (Lotte Hi-Mart)

Lotte Hi-Mart Co., an electronics retailer under South Korea’s Lotte Group, has introduced an experiential store tailored to single-person households, the first attempt since its inception.

Lotte Hi-Mart announced on Sunday that The Nano Square opened its doors to customers on Saturday at Dundun Dongdaemun in central Seoul. The new concept store is located on the first two basement floors.

The store noticeably omits the Hi-Mart signage and logo, signaling the company’s commitment to differentiating this new store concept from its existing outlets.

One standout feature on the second basement floor is the Persona Showroom, a concept entirely new to Hi-Mart.

This area occupies roughly one-third of the store’s 1,057 square meters. Hi-Mart took a risk by reducing the number of products from around 1,800 to 920 to create this space.

The showrooms are curated specifically for single-person households and divided into five themes: housekeeping, beauty, music, and more. Notably, popular single-person content creators collaborated on the design of each space.

For instance, the beauty showroom was created in partnership with beauty YouTuber si-ne, who helped transform the area into a powder room equipped with beauty devices that customers can try for themselves.

The product lineup has also seen a refresh.

Of the 920 items in the store, 310 are new, with a particular focus on increasing the selection of electronics suited for single-person households. Opposite the showrooms is a Curation Library, where electronics are displayed in bookshelf-style arrangements.

Customers can scan QR codes to access product information and make purchases.

Hi-Mart’s move to launch this experiential electronics store is part of a broader strategy to find ways to navigate the current economic downturn.

Traditional offline multi-brand electronics stores have been struggling, as demand for high-end electronics shifts to department stores, while low-cost electronics are increasingly purchased through e-commerce platforms.

In addition, a growing trend among consumers is to purchase multiple appliances from the same brand for interior design purposes, further diluting the distinct advantages that electronics stores like Hi-Mart once held.

Hi-Mart plans to evaluate the success of this new experiential store model as it develops new locations and renovates existing ones to better fit the specific needs of each market.

While the company only opened one new store last year, the number has increased to five this year, including The Nano Square.

For example, Hi-Mart opened a store at Enter Six Anyang Station, a complex shopping mall inside the Anyang subway station, in June.

Given the area’s concentration of young people, including university students, shoppers, and cinema-goers, the store features specialized zones like a keyboard experience shop and an audio equipment experience zone.

In July, Hi-Mart opened another store within HANSSEM Designpark in Gwanggyo, Gyeonggi Province, focusing on built-in and kitchen appliances, while offering integrated appliance and furniture consultation services to reflect the large residential population in the Gwanggyo area.

The launch of The Nano Square as a single-person household-oriented store is also a result of Hi-Mart’s efforts to create market-specific stores.

The location in Dongdaemun reflects the area’s increasing population of young people and foreigners living alone, particularly given its proximity to Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) and Euljiro in central Seoul.

According to Statistics Korea, 44.5 percent of households in Dongdaemun were single-person households as of last year.