Xiaomi once again reiterated their plan to expand their offline distribution in China. Xiaomi was focused solely on online sales ever since the company was founded back in 2010, and they’ve slowly started opening offline, physical stores in China a while back. Xiaomi had opened up 51 physical stores in China last, and this year, though that number will grow considerably in the future, as the company plans to open up 1,000 physical stores by 2020.
Now, Lei Jun actually revealed some more info regarding Xiaomi’s plans in 2017 during a press conference in Beijing. According to the company’s CEO, Xiaomi plans to open up 250 new offline stores in China this year, as part of the bigger picture, and the company’s plan in the next couple of years. Lei Jun strongly believes that the company has a great plan for ‘New Retail’, which essentially puts focus on Xiaomi’s very own stores, instead of buying off small business in China. Xiaomi believes that opening such stores will help them increase their sales, as they see offline sales as a very important component when it comes to sales in general. OPPO and Vivo are currently the second and third smartphone manufacturer in China, at least in terms of sales, and they have been selling their products via offline channels for quite some time now, and the same can be said for Huawei, who is currently, by far, no. 1 smartphone manufacturer in China.
Xiaomi’s CEO believes that the company can keep prices low, even though they need to factor in labor costs. Lei Jun plans to optimize the manufacturing process, and analyze the market properly in order to keep costs low. All in all, Xiaomi is planning to become one of China’s top smartphone manufacturers when it comes to offline sales, though that would take some time, it seems. It’s also worth mentioning that Xiaomi plans to increase offline sales in India to 25% this year, which will also be interesting. Lei Jun did not say anything about Xiaomi’s global expansion during this press conference, his speech mostly focused on offline sales in China, just in case you were wondering.