Dimapurians acquire new experience of Asian retail stores

Ephraim Chishi 
Dimapur | March 13

Humans are a whimsical species; we enjoy novelty and entertain ourselves with the new and trendy. It is hardly a wonder then that we always demand for more things to keep ourselves occupied with. Japanese and Korean trends are nothing new, however they are relevant to this day and people are interested in them. 

To supply these demands, many convenience store chains have opened up including the likes of Mumuso, Mimiso and Usupso. These convenience stores sell all kinds of products ranging from soft toys to kitchen appliance. Coming to India, and now Nagaland, these chain stores have been able to cater to an untouched market that previously had very little means of access to foreign branded products.

Mumuso, located near City Tower is a very popular Chinese distributor of household goods “inspired by” Korean aesthetics, according to insiderretail.asia. 

The Dimapur store manager Thangkai Chongloi states that the Mumuso brand focuses on selling products with fashionable and trendy designs. According to Chongloi, the selling points of the store are “…the product quality and durability, according to its cost.” He says that Mumuso is especially popular amongst teens and young adults, who serve as the majority of the stores customer base. 

A customer at the store, a female student says she checked out Mumuso because there were brand products there that were not available elsewhere. She also like that the products were very cute and fashionable. 

Some other customers also commented that they were frequents at the stores and what they liked most was the ceramic mugs at Mumuso, which also made for excellent gifts.

Miniso, located next to Breeze Bakery is also a Chinese franchise that sells all sorts of products that are heavily “inspired by” Japanese design.

Established in September of 2019, the Dimapur store manager of Miniso states that products at Miniso sell well because “they are very reasonably priced and are of good quality as well.”

She says that the majority of her customers are young adult females, with many of the customers purchasing products like cosmetics, bags, soft toys and the like. 

When talking to some of the customers in Miniso, many of them said that they liked shopping there because the products were much cheaper in comparison to the other stores and the products were also of good quality for the prices.

A good number of customers also shared that they very much liked the perfumes at Miniso and had purchased them multiple times for personal use as well for gifting to friends. 

A middle aged man at the store commented he liked the electronics and gadgets that were sold at these brand stores.

Another such store in Dimapur is Usupso, a Japanese inspired chain store located near Khermahal was opened on October of 2019. The brand was founded in 2013 by Wei Lei and Zhong Yao.  According to Usupso manager, Ajemer, being the latest of the stores to open meant that there was already market saturation so they had to work more to have the same reach. He states that most of the customers are in their twenties, with a majority of them being female. Some of their bestselling products are makeup and household items as well as soft toys.

These chain stores have most of their productions set up in China, thus they can sell things for much cheaper than anything made in Japan or Korea. They have only been increasing in popularity since their arrival and are well liked by the customers.

Before the arrival of these stores, it was nearly impossible to buy Japanese or Korean products apart from online stores and even then these were usually quite expensive. Especially personal care products like innisfree and DHC were heavily desired but could not be bought easily. 

The opening of these stores really improved the options a customer has for a variety of products, the competition they bring means that locally made products have to step up their game to be able to have a foot hold in the  market, especially of the younger demographic.

The writer is a student of BAMC 208-21 batch of Doon Business School, Dehradun and is an intern in The Morung Express.