998 Shop Network is a matching platform for shop supply and demand, serving shop owners, first-time entrepreneurs and brand retailers. It brings listings, transfer consultants, advertising slots and member postings into one system, modernising traditional shop leasing with data and standards.
Project background
A shop’s location is fixed, so the leasing market is strongly local: a landlord’s premises sit in one block, and a tenant weighing up a site has to consider both the position and the city’s business environment. Traditional brokers keep listings in their heads and check details by phone — information is asymmetric, site selection is inefficient and risk is hard to avoid.
The platform set out to fix exactly these three things: real listings, options across cities, and service you can trace.
Platform design
The platform runs branch sites in more than ten cities nationwide and switches to the matching city site by the visitor’s IP address; listings, consultants and advertising slots are all managed by region, so one back office serves operations in many places.
Main features
Advertising slots in one place
Every ad slot on the cover is managed in the back office, each region has its own unique identifier, and operators can price by position. The back office clearly shows slots that are sold and vacant slots that have been taken down, and an advertiser can choose freely among vacant positions when signing.
Transfer consultants on show
The home page lists the company’s senior transfer consultants, presenting each one’s strengths, experience and completed cases, so a prospective partner can find the consultant they want before committing.
Members publish for themselves
The platform offers free listing posting for members. Once signed in, a member can see both the paid, consultant-handled listings and the enquiries coming in on their own free postings.
Joined up with the sales system
998 Shop Network shares order data with the Xiaozhushou sales management system: from a prospective client to a signed contract, an ad going live and finally the shop changing hands, the whole lifecycle is managed in one place.
Data integration
Advertising is the platform’s core inventory, and going live or coming down has to match the sales pipeline. The two systems exchange data at three points — an ad going live, an ad being taken down, and a deal turning into a success story: once sales signs, the slot goes live automatically; when it expires or the lease ends it comes down automatically; and a completed transfer is kept as a case. Nobody has to carry status between two back offices by hand.
Outcome
- Listings are organised by city site and visitors land on the local one automatically, so site hunting is no longer a blind search across cities.
- Advertising slots went from “held by word of mouth” to visible expiry and vacancy status in the back office, so a slot can be picked at signing.
- Consultants’ strengths and track records are put up front on the home page, so a client has already filtered once before making contact.
- Order and ad status sync between the two systems in real time, and completed transfers settle into cases automatically.
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