In today's decline of physical bookstores, building a complex bookstore is the transformation choice of many bookstores, and Yanji is undoubtedly one of the successful cases. After more than 10 years of development, it has now opened a number of stores across the country, with multiple sub-brands such as Yanji Today Reading, Yanji and Yanbao Paradise.
Yanjiyou IFS store opened in 2016 and is the first flagship store in the country. The bookstore has an area of more than 4,000 square meters and a total of more than 120,000 books, covering cafes, creative markets, art galleries and other areas. The starlit sign at the entrance suggests that this is a "future" bookstore, with white wrought iron netting separating the space, an atrium on a glass round table for the exhibition of art, a café lounge in the shape of a space capsule, a lecture hall with a streamlined gray brick floor, and a starry sky ceiling.
The bookstore separates the creative product area from the book display area, making each space more private. Literature books occupy a large proportion, and history, art, and social science books are also relatively abundant. It is worth mentioning that the bookstore has many original books from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Britain and the United States, such as Zhu Tianxin's works, "Forrest Gump", "Hallibert", as well as well-known magazines such as "Milk", "Vogue", "Kinfolk", etc., and also provides books from some small language countries, but most of these books can only be purchased and do not support internal reading.
The children's book area "Treasure Paradise" is one of the most popular areas of bookstores. The bookstore features a 10-metre-high "fortress" bookcase inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle, with items such as dolls and school bags, soft cushions in the reading area, and a children's book section with not only a variety of picture books, but also children's editions similar to classic literary books such as the Four Great Classics and The Ordinary World.
As a lifestyle experience store, Yanjiyou's shop-in-shop is eye-catching. The bookstore is integrated into catering, hairdressing, photo studios, pottery, floristry, supermarkets and other formats. Gangjiu Tea Restaurant and the well-known Korean ice cream brand SOFTREE are the two major dining options in the bookstore, with Little Raccoon's Flowers and Plants and Como Flowers selling flowers, immortal flowers and succulents, guests can also experience the fun of making their own silver jewelry at the Yanjiyou Eighteen Character Gold Store, and the imported supermarket located at the entrance of the bookstore Jenny@eataly which has only opened more than 30 stores in the world, is very popular. The rich and diverse brands have added a lot of popularity to Yanji, but the bookstore does not completely separate the shop-in-store from the book display area, which affects the reading environment to a certain extent.
From the perspective of being a bookstore, Yanji has problems such as confusing book classification and poor reading environment, and is more like a grocery market with books as a foil.
