Time：2026-08-15
At the start of 2026, a "store revolution" is quietly unfolding in China's mobile phone industry. OPPO's first flagship store in Northwest China landed at the Xi'an Saige International Shopping Center, weaving Tang dynasty baoxiang floral patterns and Terracotta Warrior IP into its display details; vivo, meanwhile, opened its first imaging experience store in North China in Shijiazhuang, turning the store into a gateway to "imaging culture for all." At the same time, Gree's "Dong Mingzhu Health Home" has surpassed 1,500 stores nationwide, with non-air-conditioning product categories reaching 42% of sales. As leading brands' terminal stores stride toward "themed, scenized, and smart" retail, the suppliers behind these stores—of display cabinets, display props, and terminal merchandising solutions—are being pushed onto a path of value reconstruction: from simply "selling shelves" in the past to "selling spatial narratives" today. Drawing on the latest brand terminal cases of 2026, this article outlines the three core insights this transformation brings to the entire display props industry.
For the past two decades, the core proposition of the display cabinet industry has been "how to make products look better"—visual impact, lighting atmosphere, and brand-color fidelity were the industry's keywords. But stores in 2026 are undergoing a qualitative change.
OPPO's Xi'an flagship store design team drew inspiration from the history of this ancient capital of thirteen dynasties, deconstructing and recombining Tang baoxiang floral patterns into the display details, and created an IP figure called "Terracotta Warrior Xiao Ou"—a general figurine appearing inside and outside the store in a "relaxed, playful sitting pose," bringing millennia-old artifacts into the world of young people in a fresher way. On opening day, several foreign diplomats in China were invited to visit the store, and OPPO Vice President Li Jie publicly stated: "We hope every flagship store can become a solid bond connecting technology, culture, and youth." This is no longer empty talk, but something the design team has implemented into every detail—mortise-and-tenon craftsmanship, Qin brick textures, and the caisson ceiling patterns of the Gongshu Hall.
In the North China market, vivo took a different path—a professional imaging route. At the opening of the vivo Imaging Experience Store in Shijiazhuang Yuhua Wanda, the vice chairman of the Hebei Provincial Photographers Association personally presented the plaque, and the "vivo Imaging Experience Store" officially became the designated imaging service partner of the Shijiazhuang Photographers Association. Centered on the "imaging" theme, the store creates a professional-grade experience scene, while also launching trendy installations such as the "Starlight Live Hall" themed photo spot, the Tian Xiwei fan-themed wall, and starlight scenarios. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Chen Changhong, General Manager of vivo's Headquarters Customer Service Department, stated plainly that this marks "a key step in vivo's North China offline terminal upgrade and deepened imaging experience strategy."
The shared logic behind these stores is: a display cabinet is no longer merely a container for display slots, but a carrier of brand narrative. It must bear composite functions such as cultural elements, IP interaction, and social check-in, which raises entirely new requirements for display prop suppliers' design capability, cultural understanding, and cross-material craft integration.
Step into any "Dong Mingzhu Health Home" and you will find a counterintuitive phenomenon—the store does not look like the imagined "counter-style display." A space of over 1,000 square meters is divided into different zones, recreating real home scenes from kitchen to bedroom: grain dehullers, water purifiers, air conditioners, beauty devices… products of different categories form a complete narrative of a "whole-home health solution" within the same space. The store blends a coffee lounge and a smart interaction zone, forming a new retail terminal that integrates consumption, experience, and socializing.
In an interview with Red Star Capital Bureau, Zhu Lei stated clearly that in the past, when consumers heard "Gree" they immediately thought of air conditioners, but one year after the launch of the "Dong Mingzhu Health Home" strategic brand, non-air-conditioning categories already account for 42% of sales. Behind this number is a brand-new "scenized display + themed terminal" solution at work.
The impact of this change on display prop suppliers is structural: the traditional "standardized display cabinets + category zoning" model is failing, replaced by a new "themed space + scenized narrative" approach. This means suppliers must possess:
Take OPPO as an example: its Tianjin Tianhe City flagship store blends the century-old Shengxifu hat shop site with League of Legends e-sports elements; its Zhengzhou Zhengdong MixC flagship store draws on Henan Ru porcelain culture, collaborates with a virtual idol boy group, and infuses hu la tang (spicy soup) and thirteen-spice flavors into custom drinks. Every city and every store is an independent "content product," behind which lies an explosion of demand for large volumes of customized themed props.
The deeper logic is that the store has evolved from a "place of transaction" into a "carrier of content." Consumers enter a store not only to buy products, but to experience a unique cultural atmosphere and feel a special emotional resonance. This "content-ized" store format requires display prop suppliers to possess "content production" capability—the ability to rapidly produce matching themed prop solutions based on the brand's marketing milestones, IP collaborations, and cultural themes.
A veteran of the display prop industry who has long served consumer-electronics brand terminals revealed: "In the past we delivered a 'hardware product,' such as a set of display cabinets or a prop wall; today we deliver a 'content scene,' such as the themed space of an IP co-branding campaign or a pop-up installation for a Spring Festival marketing milestone. This change poses unprecedented challenges to suppliers' 'content comprehension' and 'rapid response' capabilities."
OPPO's service system has a core philosophy: "May attentive service become the starting point of our friendship." Behind it is a three-tier architecture: over 800 service centers and 32 mail-in repair centers across the country, with coverage exceeding 80% in first- and second-tier cities.
But service is not just the terminal brand's own affair. When a brand opens hundreds or even thousands of stores nationwide, the display prop supplier's "full-cycle service capability"—from design, prototyping, production, logistics, and installation to after-sales maintenance—is becoming a hard criterion for brands when choosing partners.
A practitioner in the display prop industry who has long served consumer-electronics brands revealed that over the past decade, the dimensions by which brands evaluate suppliers have shifted three major times:
This change is a huge challenge for small and medium-sized display prop suppliers, but a rare opportunity for integrated suppliers with complete production systems, digital management capabilities, and long-cycle service experience.
As an integrated display prop and smart terminal manufacturing enterprise rooted in Dongguan and reaching across the country, Guangdong Shengqilin Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. has accumulated rich practical experience in this transformation.
Shengqilin has a 35,000-square-meter modern production base; five workshops (laser cutting, CNC bending, robotic welding, automatic spraying, and assembly) form a one-stop, full-process capability, and 32 quality inspection procedures ensure consistency of every product. With a library of 800+ custom mold sets, it can rapidly respond to the differentiated needs of different brands—whether the standardized terminals of consumer-electronics brands like OPPO and vivo, or the scenized themed stores of major clients like Gree and Luzhou Laojiao—all efficiently realized on Shengqilin's production lines.
More importantly, Shengqilin possesses multi-craft integration capability spanning sheet metal to acrylic, woodwork to glass—the core capability of the "themed store" era. Its client roster, with cooperation experience from 30+ first-tier brands including OPPO, VIVO, Transsion Holdings, Gree Electric, DeRUCCI mattresses, Luzhou Laojiao, and Haidilao, is itself the strongest proof of Shengqilin's "full-cycle service capability."
The 2026 store revolution is not a simple "renovation upgrade," but a "value reconstruction" jointly participated in by brands, consumers, and display prop suppliers. When OPPO's flagship store becomes a "city park for the young," when vivo's experience store becomes a "gateway to imaging culture for all," and when Gree's Health Home becomes a "scenized showroom of whole-home health solutions," the display prop suppliers behind them must evolve from the past "product manufacturer" into today's "co-creator of brand narrative."
This is the best of times for the display prop industry, yet also the most challenging. Suppliers that take the lead in upgrading their capabilities in this transformation will have the chance to become the industry's pacesetters for the next decade.
