A bookstore's endeavor to survive and thrive in a digital era

Feeling the punch of booming e-commerce, the Xinhua bookstores have been resorting to the virtual world to expand their businesses.

Changzhou Xinhua bookstore established an e-commerce department at the beginning of 2013.

Luo Kai with the e-commerce department still remembers how thrilled he and his colleagues were when receiving the first order.

"Several of us volunteered to drive to deliver that book together," he says.

However, the online business was not as good as they expected. For quite a long time, the store could only receive three to four orders a day.

Inspired by other online sellers, they cooperated with a popular writer who was going to publish a new book, asking her to post the link of the store on her Sina Weibo account.

The bookstore received the order of over 1,000 books in the following three days, so the store started doing promotions targeting online buyers.

The Changzhou store has seen its sales volume exceeding 400 million yuan($61.5 million) in 2017, ranking the first among all Xinhua chain stores in the 13 major cities in the province.

"We should not just sit there blaming others about changing habits in reading and consumption," said He Zhifeng, general manager of the Changzhou store.

"Sometimes it only takes a change of mind, and we gain a fresh start," he says.