Probably the world’s largest outdoor mall was inaugurated in Beijing last month, with a smattering of international and Asian brands on a sales surface of 6,500 square meters. Oddly called Neil, the mall features shop-in-shops with brand names from Columbia to Deuter, Fjällräven, Lafuma, Meindl, The North Face, Vaude and many more. Asian brands such as Black Yak Korea, Kailas and Toread have their own stores in the mall, which will also feature climbing and boulder walls.
A symposium held after the opening warned that the growth of China’s outdoor business, which was estimated at an annual average of about 30 percent in the last years, should slow to about 10 percent in 2009. Then again, this was still much better than most European markets, and the opening of the mall highlighted the rise of high-quality outdoor retail space in China.
The symposium was held by the organizers of Nanjing’s Asia Outdoor trade fair, which will take place at the end of July. They have hired agents in Germany to recruit more European participants and to set up a joint European platform at this year’s edition, with packages starting from €3,000. The organizers aim to double the number of European exhibitors at the Nanjing fair to about 30 this year. So far most of them have been German, while Scandinavian outdoor brands attended the Ispo China fair.
