Robot brands are opening mall stores to test offline sales, trust, and after-sales
创业邦 · wechat · 2026-07-23
China's embodied AI players are moving from demo booths into shopping malls, and the new frontline is the retail store.
- The article says companies such as Unitree, AgiBot, and others are opening experience stores and flagship shops in major commercial districts from Shanghai Nanjing West Road and Beijing Wangfujing to Wuhan Optics Valley and Shenzhen.
- The shift is not just marketing theater: stores are becoming a way to compete on real user experience, offline trust, and consumer confidence rather than only specs and funding stories.
- Two patterns are emerging:
- Brand-owned flagship / joint retail stores, where the company controls product display, demo flow, and sales.
- Robot concept stores / 7S stores, which bundle display, experience, sales, rental, maintenance, customization, and education.
- The article argues robots differ from phones because consumers cannot judge gait, interaction quality, or practical usefulness from a screen; they need hands-on demos and often higher-touch sales, more like car buying than smartphone shopping.
- Some early signs of demand already exist: one Wuhan robot store reportedly drew 18,000 visitors in about two months and recorded around 615,000 yuan in sales.
- But the piece also notes the business is still early: for most vendors, B2B remains dominant, and current stores are mainly testing customer profiles, price bands, demo-to-delivery workflows, and after-sales service.
The longer-term bet is that robot retail will borrow from both phone stores and car dealerships: brand-building storefronts now, wider channel networks later if products get cheaper and more practical.
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