China Gets Physical

With e-commerce growth slowing, tech leaders push harder into local stores

“We want customers to be able to see, touch, and ask questions”

- Christina Larson

In September, Chinese drone maker DJI opened a flagship store in Hong Kong’s trendy Causeway Bay neighborhood. On the first floor, in an area cordoned off with black netting, like a batting cage, customers test the machines in flight. The second floor resembles a museum, the walls decorated with framed aerial drone photos of a bamboo forest in Kyoto, Japan; white waves trailing a ship near the Philippines; farm equipment combing fields in the Netherlands. The third floor houses a repair station, where on a recent Wednesday afternoon, three people stood in line waiting for advice.

Selling in its own stores in China is new for 10-year-old DJI. While the Shenzhen company is the world’s leading seller of consumer drones,it is, unlike most Chinese tech businesses, more popular elsewhere. About 80 percent of sales come from abroad, more than half from the U.S., where hobbyist interest had been cultivated by decades’ worth of radio-controlled helicopters and other toys.

The U.S. also taught DJI the value of brick and mortar, says Michael Perry, DJI’s director for strategic partnerships. A deal with Apple put the company’s new Phantom 4 drone in more than 400 Apple Stores around the world this spring, and the resulting bump in sales led DJI to think harder about expanding its in-store presence. In the past year the drone maker has opened stores in Shenzhen, Beijing, and Seoul, along with the one in Hong Kong. “It’s really important to have a place where consumers can see a drone, where they can fly it for the first time,” says Perry. “We want customers to be able to see, touch, and ask questions.”