Description
The new concept for Hema Mini, by Area-17, marks the end of a journey that Area-17 Architecture & Interiors and Alibaba took together in redesigning the group’s convenience store format. The new Hema Mini is a local store that is mainly targeting families located within residential neighborhoods.
The starting point was taking on the challenge of influencing the habit in Chinese culture of daily shopping at traditional city markets and implementing it in a large retail distributor. From a designer point of view, this meant transferring and translating the typical elements of a traditional Chinese market within the limited space of a convenience store.
The answer starts with a highly-functional layout where the core is the fresh fruits and vegetables display and all other shopping paths depart from there. The emphasis of fresh products finds its full expression in the fish tank, focal point of the whole sale area. According to Alibaba’s policies of providing multiple solutions for their customers’ needs, they also provide a great selection of freshly cooked ready-to-eat items that can be consumed inside the supermarket.
Keeping in mind low implementation costs, the interiors are essential and hint to the vernacular architecture of traditional Chinese markets both in terms of materials and display furniture. The ceiling fixtures of different colors are inspired by the typical draping of stalls and define the commercial areas, conveying an overall visual vibrancy typical of the lively city markets.
Great attention has been paid to the storefront, aiming to make Hema Mini easily recognizable within a busy city environment. The façade alternates branded sections to transparent sections, which guarantees a seamless view from the outside to the inside. Area-17 designed the Hema Mini visual identity too, from the new logo to packaging solutions, and environmental graphics.
