Revamped Starfield Market Emart designed with community in mind

YONGIN, Gyeonggi — Emart revamped one of its top-selling stores, the Jukjeon branch, and gave it a brand-new name — Starfield Market Emart Jukjeon — with the aim of becoming more than just a local hypermarket.

The Jukjeon branch, officially re-opened on Thursday, combines the features of retail giant Shinsegae Group’s Starfield Mall shopping complex with its existing hypermarket branch.

"Breaking away from the sole goal of shopping [in Emart stores], we wanted to provide a space where customers can take a break and spend time together,” Starfield Market Jukjeon’s manager, Seo Hyok-jin, said Thursday during the branch’s opening event.

The exterior of the re-opened branch was not so distant from other Emart hypermarkets, but upon entering the branch, an Olive Young cosmetics store, Hanssem’s furniture store and a Knotted Donut cafe welcomed the reporter instead of the familiar entrance to the Emart supermarkets usually lined with an array of shelves filled with discounted grocery products.

A short walk to the center of the branch leads to the highlight of the Starfield Market: the Book Ground, a smaller version of the Starfield Library seen at the larger Starfield shopping complexes in Coex and Suwon. The Book Ground is accompanied by a Starbucks — the largest in any Emart branch — surrounded by a spacious open seating area.

The first floor of the renewed branch also houses golf-specialized retailer Golfzone Market, Youngpoong Bookstore, and a Shinsegae Factory Store mini outlet, with Uniqlo set to open in October. A Jaju store, Shinsegae International’s lifestyle brand, is also present with a brand new interior that takes inspiration from the traditional Korean housing style of  hanok.

All of the new stores opening on the first floor meant that they had to reduce the size of the Emart hypermarket, which was the offline branch with the highest revenue in 2023 by a significant margin. The almost 20,000-square-meter (213,500-square-feet) Emart and Electro Mart electronics store that spanned three floors was now reduced to the basement at a more humble 6,600 square meters.

“The existing store, focused only on shopping, provided convenience to many customers, but we wanted the Jukjeon branch […] to adapt to the changing lifestyle of customers and be a central point of the local community,” the store manager said.

Seo explained that due to the geographical location of the Jukjeon branch, with many households with young kids residing nearby, it became a place where families visit together on the weekends to shop and hang out, alongside Shinsegae’s South City branch across the street that is connected through an underground passage.

The Emart hypermarket, therefore, specializes in daily grocery shopping for families.

“The demand for grocery shopping increased so we kept the grocery section of the store as much as possible, which resulted in a significant reduction in the non-grocery categories,” Emart’s PR team manager told the Korea JoongAng Daily.

The food section of the store also had fresh-cut fruit, balanced meals and a refrigerated sandwich section to better suit the store’s target demographics.

The second floor of the branch, which mainly housed Shinsegae’s in-house electronics store Electro Mart, was now transformed into an all-in-one floor with gourmet restaurants including Ashley Queens, Gatten Sushi, Seonjae Shabu House and casual Chinese restaurant Star Chungdam, along with budget store Daiso, French sporting brand Decathlon and an area for kids and their parents.

"We probably would've never designed the store this way, moving away from just focusing on the concept of shopping," the branch manager said.

"Emart wanted to give the large mall area back to customers."

BY CHO YONG-JUN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]