Chapter 390: Chapter 312 Taboo Hush Money_2

Cheng Zhu went into the store to have a look and then started shopping around Star City.

Today, he wasn’t shopping for someone else; he was shopping for new clothes for himself.

“Baby Lu’s birthday is just around the corner.”

“There will definitely be some of her other friends whom I haven’t met yet.”

“Don’t I need to dress up properly?”

“I don’t need to be overly handsome, just aiming for ‘ordinary’ will be enough.”

He also planned to later go to Tony for a haircut.

As is widely known, getting a haircut is one of life’s great gambles!

Therefore, you absolutely shouldn’t get a haircut the day before Baby Lu’s birthday.

In case it turned out to be a disaster, at least there would be a few days cushion to make preparations.

“I’m not being vain.”

“It’s just that with Lin Lu’s birthday, she will surely be the leading lady.”

“Given the relationship between her, her besties, and me, I’ve got to be a leading man!”

“The leading man must look the part!”

While strolling through Star City, Cheng Zhu noticed something.

That was the prevalence of young people among the customers at many luxury brand counters.

The spending power of the younger demographic had been growing year by year.

This was true for both well-off second-generation rich kids and young people from ordinary families alike.

This trend would become particularly pronounced starting from the year ’15.

This had a lot to do with the proliferation of mobile payment and the emergence of functions like Huabei.

Many people may have felt that there’s a distinct difference between handing out cash and mobile payment at the moment of purchase.

Additionally, young people tend to not have much in savings, with those having substantial savings being a minority.

Functions like Huabei allow you to switch from zero savings to negative savings.

What’s more terrifying is that you can pay in installments with this thing!

This is also a reason why high consumption would grow particularly fast in the following years.

“Slowly but surely, the capital market has started focusing on the younger demographic.”

“You’ll notice that a lot of high-consumption products used to not aim their advertisements or their online promotion models at appealing to the youth.”

“But as time went on, they started to butter up to young consumers.”

“Even Moutai would later start to focus more on the younger market, which would have been unheard of in these years.”

Thus, in these years, there was actually a lot that Cheng Zhu could do in the industrial sector.

Cheng Zhu shopped all the way from the east entrance to the west entrance of Star City.

He bought a dark grey overcoat and a black turtleneck sweater.

Standing by the west entrance of Star City, he looked at the stores that opened along that side.

“This side seems to have larger spaces,” Cheng Zhu thought.

His Youu Tea was at the east entrance with just over a hundred square meters.

This side, on the other hand, might be forty or fifty square meters larger, totaling nearly 200 square meters.

But from what he could see in terms of foot traffic, the east entrance had a higher flow of people, outside of which was a six-lane road; in contrast, the west entrance led to a smaller two-lane road.

“This digital products shop isn’t doing so well,” Cheng Zhu thought.

“It probably has something to do with the Xiaomi across the street and the Apple store in the mall.”

“It’s almost ’15 now, Lei Bu Si’s Xiaomi has started to really kick off.”

“At this year’s Taobao Tmall Double 11 event, they sold 1.89 million units in one fell swoop – fierce!”

“If I remember correctly, by next year’s ‘Mi Fan Festival,’ they set a new record, selling over 2 million units?”

Cheng Zhu thought about having a chat with Manager Wu of the leasing department; should the digital product store at the west entrance fail, he was interested in taking it over.

It wasn’t that he wanted to sell digital products, but he had another good project in mind, which also required setting up shop in the mall.

“No other reason, just a simple liking for the shops on the first floor of high-end malls,” Cheng Zhu thought.

“On the other hand, Lei Bu Si lowered the price of the phones, and I lowered the price of QQ lingerie – if we round up, we’re kind of on the same path.”

“A match made in heaven, a match made in heaven!”

With nothing else to do, Cheng Zhu first put the clothes he purchased into his car, and then he returned to Youu Tea.

As he passed by Starbucks, he just saw Lei Zi… uh, no – during work hours, he was called Richard – and noticed Richard placing a promotion board by the store entrance.

There were Starbucks’ Christmas limited-edition drinks on it.

Richard, looking at the promotional board’s images, could not fathom what the hell was going through the heads of the people buying Youu Tea!

“Christmas is coming! Christmas!”

“As per tradition here at Starbucks, we’ve replaced the usual cups with red ones that match the Christmas spirit!”

“Red cups, huh! Red cups!”

“Such a big change, how could you not buy a cup, then snap a beautiful photo and post it on your social circle or Weibo?”

In fact, this had exactly been the trend in previous years.

A Christmas limited-edition drink together with red Christmas cups would indeed attract more customers all set to click, click, click away with their cameras.

But for some reason, people just found Youu Tea more appealing.

Richard couldn’t for the life of him figure it out.

But Cheng Zhu understood all too well!

“There are many reasons for this.”

“For instance, the novelty and trendiness of new-fangled internet-famous milk teas like Youu Tea are much stronger.”

“Besides, Chinese people inherently prefer drinking milk tea over coffee, the taste caters to a wider audience.”

“Moreover, you guys have been doing the same old thing each year; how impressive is changing to a red cup supposed to be?”