259 new stores have aggressively entered the market, and outlet projects across the country are running at full combat strength!
In July, outlet malls across China were caught in a crazy store-opening boom, seizing the peak of family travel and consumption during the summer vacation while building up full momentum for the traditional peak season of outlet malls in the second half of the year.
According to incomplete statistics from Winshang, over 60 sample outlet malls nationwide opened 259 new brand stores in July 2026. Among them, 213 are newly settled stores, accounting for about 82%; 44 are renovated and upgraded stores, accounting for about 17%; and 2 more appeared in the form of pop-up stores.
Outlet projects across the country are competing for the "concentration of firepower" of new stores. Wuhan Capital Outlets opened more than 20 new stores at the same time, Hengyang Shanshan Outlets intensively launched 17 new brands, and Xi'an Wangfujing Outlets Lintong Town welcomed 11 new brands...
Compared with May and June, the total number of new stores in July increased significantly, which shows that brands' willingness to expand their layout through outlet channels is accelerating.
In terms of format proportion, fashion apparel accounts for 49% and sports outdoor accounts for 29%, the two categories take up nearly 80% of all newly opened stores, and "wearing-related consumption" remains the absolute core base of outlet malls.
Peak of new first-store openings. Among the 32 first stores, city-level outlet first stores account for 41%, and high-level first stores (national/regional first stores) account for 18% in total. In terms of regional distribution, Central China ranks first with 9 stores, followed by East China with 7 stores and Northeast China with 5 stores.
High-profile outlet first stores are no longer exclusive to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Bicester Village Suzhou welcomed the national outlet first stores of FPA, a local original streetwear brand in China, and PETIZEN, an emerging pet lifestyle brand; Tianjin New Yansha Outlets introduced SLIMIKA, a local minimalist light luxury women's wear brand. Wuxi Yueshang Outlets welcomed the first latest outlet image store of THE NORTH FACE in southern Jiangsu. Regional outlet malls are rewriting the first-store map with their own strength.
01.
Luxury/Light Luxury: Accelerated Influx Into Second-tier Provincial Capitals
In July, luxury and light luxury brands opened 13 new stores, accounting for 5%. The number of new stores is basically the same as that in May and June, but the trend of accelerating aggregation in second-tier provincial capitals in July is obvious.
MET, a trendy luxury collection store, and FION, a light luxury women's bag brand under the Chow Sang Sang Group, entered Wuhan; VETEMENTS, a pioneer designer luxury streetwear brand, entered Hefei. ELLE entered Harbin, Samsonite entered Kunming, and Tommy Hilfiger successively settled in Hefei and Shenyang. From Harbin to Kunming, from Hefei to Shenyang, the demand for quality consumption in second-tier provincial capitals is exploding.
The first COLE HAAN South China outlet store, an American light luxury footwear brand, settled in Shenzhen Shanshan Outlets. The store is presented in an American casual light luxury style, with simple and modern display. The light white walls and floral soft furnishings create a transparent and elegant space, fully presenting all categories of men's and women's products such as shock-absorbing casual sneakers, retro Mary Jane flat shoes, and commuter leather tote bags.
MET Trendy Luxury Collection Store settled in Wuhan Shanshan Outlets. The store gathers a number of international designer brands. The space design emphasizes "curatorial" display, and updates the product selection theme every two weeks, forming a clear differentiation with conventional brand exclusive stores.
The exclusive first store of VETEMENTS in Hefei settled in Sasseur (Hefei) Outlets. This high-street fashion brand is presented in the form of a single independent store. The store mainly features oversized silhouettes and iconic logo series, keeping the products synchronized with the full-price stores but with more competitive prices.
02.
Sports Outdoor: Rich Store Forms, First Stores Gather Together
Sports outdoor is the format with the richest store types and the densest first stores in outlet malls in July: 75 new stores opened, accounting for 29%; 12 first stores, accounting for 38% of all first stores across formats. It covers all store types including seasonal discount stores, flagship stores, pop-up stores and image stores, with 2 regional first stores settled at the same time.
High-end Professional Outdoor: First Stores Appear in Clusters
High-end professional outdoor brands adopt the combined strategy of "flagship store + image store + first store", and build immersive check-in spaces to build differentiated core competitiveness in the outlet track.
The fourth outlet store of Snow Peak, known as the "Hermès in the camping industry", landed in Taiyuan Tianmei Shanshan. The store integrates the landmark check-in concept, and creates an immersive check-in space with a giant titanium cup art installation. The original wood and green plants create a Japanese-style camping space, and the independent coffee area improves the stay experience. The products cover light outdoor apparel, hiking footwear and camping accessories, taking into account multiple scenarios of commuting and outdoor activities.
The first Mammut Liaoning outlet store settled in Shenyang Shanshan Outlets, positioning itself as high-end outdoor equipment. Its product line covers all scenarios such as city, hiking, climbing and skiing. The store adopts the Alpine-style space design to build a gathering place for high-end outdoor enthusiasts.
KAILAS became the outdoor brand with the most aggressive store expansion in outlet malls in July, opening 6 stores in a single month, covering Harbin, Wuhan, Guiyang, Xi'an, Beijing and Qingdao. Among them, the Lintong store in Xi'an is the exclusive local outlet image store, focusing on professional climbing and trail running equipment; the Qingdao Carnival · Hisense Plaza VILLAGE store is the first outlet image flagship store in Qingdao, with a double-layer independent design, creating a mountain immersive feeling with a rock-themed space and rock wall texture wall.
Mass Sports: Parallel Innovation of Store Form and Sinking of Channels
Mass sports brands are building differentiated competitive barriers in the outlet track through store form innovation and channel sinking.
Taiyuan Tianmei Shanshan Outlets welcomed the first LI-NING Super Outlets 2.0 store in Shanxi, whose space integrates sports technology and Shanxi regional cultural elements, covering all categories and setting up exclusive display areas; LI-NING YOUNG successively opened 2 stores in Shenyang Shanshan and Beijing Sail Huaxiang, focusing on the combination of child-friendly space design and sports experience.
Wuhan Capital Outlets opened the ANTA park flagship store, creating a collective space with the concept of "sports park", covering a full range of products such as professional children's sports, cool quick-drying, spine-protecting schoolbags, and trendy running shoes.
Lanzhou Sasseur Outlets welcomed the first CAMEL Outdoor City Lanzhou outlet store, covering 8 categories such as hiking, camping and mountain climbing with a large-scale integrated format.
Beneunder opened 3 stores in July in succession: Wuhan Capital Outlets flagship store, Wuxi Yueshang Outlets renovated store, and Shenyang Wangfujing Outlets Qipanshan Town pop-up store. Light outdoor brands are seizing the summer cooling and sun protection demand through the combination of "flagship store + renovated store + pop-up store" to rapidly expand the market through outlet channels.
03.
Fashion Apparel: Women's Wear Takes Half of the Market, Stores Collectively Transform Into "Check-in Spots"
Fashion apparel opened 127 new stores in July, accounting for 49%, firmly ranking as the largest format in outlet malls; 12 first stores, accounting for 36% of all first stores across formats. Women's wear accounts for the highest proportion (49%), which is the most active category for outlet store expansion in July; men's wear accounts for 20%; apparel collection stores and children's wear/children's shoes account for 15% and 11% respectively.
Outlet Stores of Apparel Brands Are Collectively Transforming Into "Check-in Spots"
At present, many apparel brand outlet stores have changed the past image of cheap discount stores with warehouse-style and stacked display, paying attention to display aesthetics, space atmosphere and visual tone, and their decoration, soft furnishings and lighting are moving closer to full-price stores.
The Navigare Hefei Shanshan Outlets store creates a vacation-style check-in scene with Italian nautical-style storefront + ocean-themed pop-up space; the first national outlet store of FPA, a local original Chinese streetwear brand, cuts into the young fashion crowd market with street functional style + gender-neutral design.
drivepro, a niche streetwear collection store, appeared in Shenzhen Shanshan Outlets. Its products cover multiple categories such as audio electronics, art ornaments, tableware and aromatherapy, outdoor cycling, watches and necklaces. With the product selection logic of integrating technology and art, it breaks the boundary of traditional outlet apparel retail.
New women's wear stores particularly focus on creating "check-in-level" scenes.
The first national outlet store of SLIMIKA, a local minimalist light luxury women's wear brand, settled in Tianjin Airport New Yansha Outlets, taking "flow" as the design concept to create a new image space that integrates architecture, aesthetics and life.
The exclusive Ganzhou store of Moshang settled in Ganzhou Shanshan Outlets, highlighting the design of "literary check-in space". The healing literary retro space, with light gray terrazzo + log moss green plant window, has outstanding photo-worthy attributes. In terms of products, it mainly uses earth-toned cotton and linen fabrics, with simple and stretched versions, covering daily commuting and leisure scenarios.
The first M.TSUBOMI Henan outlet store settled in Zhengzhou Shanshan Erqi Store, with light beige light luxury space + black embellishment, open moving line, and scene-based display of art mannequins. The products cover new Chinese style, lace suits, and urban commuter series.
The first Henan store of IDPAN, an Italian designer women's wear brand, settled in Zhengzhou Shanshan Outlets Erqi Store, taking "between form and meaning" as the theme, and taking "creating fashion with the idea of architectural design" as the core concept, integrating architectural three-dimensional silhouette and flowing lines into tailoring, creating a series of urban women's wear with both artistic sense and practicability.
MaiMeng opened 3 stores in July in succession (Shenyang Shanshan Super Image Store, Hengyang Shanshan Store, Shenyang Wangfujing Qipanshan Store). Among them, the Shenyang Shanshan Outlets store is a super-large new image store, featuring "super-large space + full-category display", covering workplace commuting and leisure scenarios.
This transformation breaks away from the materialized shopping logic of simply competing on price, weakens the rigid label of outlet malls as "inventory clearance places", improves the environmental experience, and effectively stimulates consumers' willingness to enter the store. A comfortable scene prolongs the stay time, drives impromptu fitting, indirectly improves the conversion rate, and realizes the effective conversion of customer flow to bag-taking rate.
Children's Wear Experience Upgrade, One-stop Parent-child Format Becomes a Trend
In July, the children's wear track in outlet malls saw the parallel development of "experience upgrade + accelerated regional coverage".
The experience upgrade of children's wear in outlet malls is obvious: Balabala North China Outlets flagship store sets up a children's fitting experience area, shifting from "selling goods" to "operating parent-child relationships"; the M.latin Beijing store strengthens the five-sense experience with "touchable texture" display, allowing parents and children to participate in product selection decisions together.
Some children's wear brands are accelerating the coverage of national outlet channels through the two-line strategy of "expanding coverage with new stores + improving quality of old stores". Balabala's new store layout covers three major regions: North China, East China and South China: new stores opened in Hebei North China Outlets flagship store, Qingdao Bailian and Shenzhen Shanshan; stores in Jinan Hainacheng and Guangzhou Wanguo were renovated and upgraded.
04.
Life Services and Catering Complement the Featured Shopping and Dining Scenarios
Life services and catering opened 44 new stores in total, accounting for 17%. Although the total number is not large, the categories are diverse — from beauty collection stores to water parks, from pet shops to cultural and creative spaces, outlet malls are rapidly evolving from "pure shopping places" to "family experience places".
Driven by the summer vacation, parent-child experience formats such as water parks, theme parks, children's sports halls, and pet social spaces were intensively launched. Guiyang Shanshan Outlets opened a summer limited water park; Beijing Wanli · Wangfujing WellTown introduced parent-child amusement projects such as Tata Le and bumper cars; the first national PETIZEN outlet store settled in Bicester Village Suzhou, presented as a composite format of pet supplies retail + social space.
Outlets catering opened 27 new stores in July, accounting for 10% of the total number of new stores. Among them, Chinese-style fast food leads with 6 stores, casual snacks and drinks together account for nearly one third, and there are 3 bakeries and dessert stores. Catering is evolving towards "lightweight, high-frequency and casual".
The opening of many brand catering first stores shows that the importance of outlet channels for the growth of catering brands has increased. Dalian Gangwan Outlets successively opened the first selected store of Lingzhi Mei Seafood Rice Noodles in Dalian, and the first fashion catering collection store of Fuye Youmian in Dalian; Changchun Wangfujing Outlets Jingyue Town introduced 2 Jilin first stores, namely Xiaoxianghui and Yizhi Suannai Niu.
Local time-honored brands, Chinese-style baking, and ethnic characteristic snacks have settled in outlet malls intensively, breaking the past single pattern where outlet catering was dominated by standardized fast food, enriching the catering supply in the mall and strengthening the catering experience.
The "Chang'an Yaji" Hui Street snack collection store in Sasseur (Xi'an) Outlets brings together Xi'an classic snacks such as Ma Xianglan mung bean cake, Yihui fresh baked beef jerky, fresh fried crispy meatballs, Guanzhong stone baked bun, rose mirror cake, Hua Nainai sour plum soup, Mumu Xi yogurt, and handmade thick-cut fried yogurt.
Sufu Chinese-style pastries appeared in Guiyang Fanhuali Outlets, focusing on three freshly baked products: seaweed meat floss small cake, yogurt crispy, and old-fashioned cake, filling the gap of Chinese-style baking category in the mall.
The Wanzhou Bay flagship store of Luk Yun Tea House settled in Wanxiang Coastal Shopping Village, focusing on Cantonese dim sum. The brand has been recommended by local people in Guangzhou for 10 consecutive years, and has been on the "Must-Eat List" of Dianping for 8 years, integrating the charm of traditional teahouses with trendy dining experience.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Winshang", author: Li Yuling, published with