Breaking out of the hutong(2)

New creations

In the month since opening, Hill says his 798 store has been doing phenomenally well, and the shelves are going to be moved around in the coming months to accommodate exhibitions.

"798 has given us the opportunity to do some creative products, keep the creative juices of the company really flowing and stay true to our values," says Hill.

Although 798 is the latest physical location, the effects are being felt back in the hutong. Reminiscing about guerilla marketing and hutong catwalks, Plastered has plans to keep the old Beijing feel. With a remade shop front on Nanluoguxiang, they are planning to host a Plastered music stage.

"We're all about trying to support the creative movement in Beijing, which let's face it, is very small," says Hill. "The creative industry needs a helping hand, and I'm all about supporting, that's what I really get excited about."

Past the departures gate at Terminal 3, NLGX's new store is a far cry from its hutong beginnings. The colors remain the same, but the cozy concrete-floored feel of the original has been replaced by sparkle and shine and neo-Asian Lego-brick-style displays. "It's something that we've built and evolved for the last four years now. We do pride ourselves that on having started and been founded in Beijing, especially Nanluoguxiang before it got super touristy," says Hung. "The airport was a great location to do something that was made in China and show off some parts of the new culture and the parts of Beijing that we like."

Future themes

The duo are still working out how to visit their new store past the airport security checks. But they insist they haven't lost the old feel of tradition and humble beginnings.

"Preserve create [the slogan on the back of their trademark 'bu chai' - not demolish - shirts], somehow that theme has carried through on everything we've done, we try to connect those two, the old and the past of Beijing, with new things," says Sutyadi. "Beijing is developing quickly but preserving its old heritage. It is spanning the bridge from the past to the future and this is one of the main themes in our design. We started off in very old and traditional Nanluoguxiang, and now we're in one of the biggest airports in the world."

Neither has outside investors, Plastered is a business which grows with his family's expansion, Hill states, and still has his landlord and ayi (an assistant) running the Nanluoguxiang branch. But could they do it again now, without the media focus of the 2008 Olympics and a relatively quiet hutong street to boost business?

"If you've got a really unique idea and you know how to market it, you could do it in any hutong and people would come to you," adds Hill. "But you've got to make people know you, it's about doing events and guerilla marketing where you spend a small amount of money and get a massive effect from it."

There's talk of the next Nanluoguxiang almost every time a small coffee shop opens in a back end hutong. But now that the cards have played out, and Wudaoying and Guozijian have already found their feet, the NLGX duo aren't sure they'd be able to do the same thing again.

"A lot of people have written about the next Nanluoguxiang, I think it's kind of overplayed," says Hung. "Five or ten years ago, it would be different. Timing is a big deal in terms of what we're making and how we're going to do it. Online has been a big point of development for a lot of retailers. If we'd do it now, we'd have to spend a larger budget for offline promotions, but that's how we'd do it."