A trip through Chinese aquatics shops

China, as we all know, is huge and very much diversified by region. So what should be my criteria for mapping out an appropriate route? I gave myself twelve days to accomplish my job, visiting aquatics stores in cities which I had already explored in 2008 in order to draw a proper comparison between then and now. In addition, these cities maintain the “old market” and “new market” style. An important point is also that their GNP per capita differs. (GNP per capita represents an important indicator when evaluating business opportunity). I also built two full weekends into my tour plan, since the weekend is traditionally the busiest time for any aquarium shop owner in China. As such, you can roughly identify which consumer age group shows the most interest in the aquarium hobby. Identifying the right target group helps in formulating effective marketing measures for your product. Shenyang This city, located in the north-eastern part of China, is one of the ten largest cities and is the capital of Liaoning Province. The sub-provincial city of Shenyang has a population of 7.2 million inhabitants (2004) and a GDP per capita of RMB 43,499 ($ 6,822 in 2007). The hotel had been decorated for the Year of the Ox. Waiting at the lift, I looked on the right into the hotel’s branded goods fashion boutique and there they were already: 36 red parrot fish swimming in a modern, individually-designed aquarium, perfectly matching the interior decoration of this high-end shop. I saw many similar setups on this tour. I remember the time when we used to spend a lot of effort and money in Europe to attract new consumer groups into keeping an aquarium, by installing the perfect aquarium in hospitals, doctors’ waiting rooms, kindergartens, etc. Here in China, an aquarium is frequently part of the decoration in an apartment, shop or office. (In this connection it is worthwhile mentioning that a decrease in apartment sales might also affect the sales of new aquariums). Aquarium shops also offer different types of ‘aquarium in a frame’, which work perfectly well with a proper filtration and lightning system. As in many aquarium stores in China, most of the aquarium shops in Shenyang can be found under one roof, together with florists. This is an interesting combination, as both represent nature. A lot of creativity is also apparent when it comes to high-class shop decoration, product presentation (e.g. fish food in a dog) and aquarium decoration (e.g. artificial marine corals with…