On June 7, Red Star Macalline, Matrix, and Dark Shell Technology reached a business strategic cooperation at the Matrix headquarters in Shenzhen, and jointly announced that the first batch of M+ material library joint projects will be launched at Red Star Macalline Guizhou Global Home Store No. 1 and Henan Zhongyuan Global Home Store No. 1.
This marks that the core layout of the “Material Library” in the “30 + 10 + 1” business strategy of the M+ Design Center released by Red Star Macalline at the end of March this year has entered the substantive construction stage from planning.
M+ Material Library is positioned as a “material selection think tank” and “supply chain hub” for designers, aiming to solve the long-standing “three difficulties” dilemma in the home decoration industry: consumers are trapped in the trust gap between renderings and delivery, designers suffer from long material selection links and difficult to control quality, and new materials and good products suffer from the high cost of entering all network channels and difficulty in reaching end users.
Zhu Jiagui, executive president of Red Star Macalline Home Furnishing Group, said, “The market does not lack good products, but it lacks an efficient channel for good products to be seen by designers and selected by customers. The M+ material library is to open up this efficient channel – allowing designers to select materials in one stop and allowing brands to reduce costs.
Cost-effective, allowing consumers to have a touchable, perceptible, and implementable consumption experience.”
From planning to implementation: M+ Material Library Twin Cities Sample Launch
In March this year, Red Star Macalline released “30.
+ 10 + 1” new strategy: Concentrate resources to build 30 city flagship M+ design centers, launch 10 M+ material libraries, and build a national designer club platform.
The material library is defined as the infrastructure of the entire M+ design ecosystem.
The twin cities of Guiyang and Zhengzhou took the lead in launching this strategy, marking the transition from concept to implementation.
The two material library samples are located in Guizhou Global Home Store No. 1 and Henan Zhongyuan Global Home Store No. 1, with planned areas of 700㎡ and 360㎡ respectively, with five functional areas including material display, digital material selection, salon activities, shared office, and product selection and leisure.
Among them, in the material display area, all types of materials such as stone, metal, wood veneer, leather cloth, paint, glass, and rock slabs are displayed according to style. Designers and consumers can touch it with their own hands and make on-site samples; in the digital material selection area, scan the code through the mini program to generate a material board, and use the dark shell AI system to preview the space matching effect with one click, realizing “what you see is what you get.”
The material library implements a dynamic replacement mechanism to continuously optimize categories and keep in line with market demand, helping high-quality materials gain more design opportunities.
Jiang Xue, president of the Matrix Research Institute, said, “Guiyang represents the important growth potential of the southwest market, and Zhengzhou represents an important city in the Central Plains market. Both places have an active designer group, strong material consumption demand, and a large number of inventory renewal opportunities. In the past, designers in second- and third-tier cities had difficulty finding high-quality materials locally.
It is often necessary to travel to first-tier cities; the material library aggregates fragmented materials so that designers can easily see and select them.
At the same time, it has also become a display and testing ground for long-tail, personalized, and niche materials. Brands can enter the second- and third-tier markets in a lightweight way, and then decide to roll out nationwide after verifying the market response.
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Three-party in-depth collaboration: channel scenarios + design product selection + AI tools, reconstructing material selection efficiency
What supports the M+ material library from concept to implementation is the deep collaboration and complementary advantages of the three-party capabilities of Red Star Macalline, Matrix Aspects and Dark Shell Technology.
As a new business operator for home life and an ecological service provider for the home industry, Red Star Macalline has been deeply involved in the industry for 40 years. It has deployed more than 300 home MALLs in more than 200 cities across the country, building a “3+ star ecology” covering home appliances, home furnishings, and home decoration design.
As of the end of May, the M+ Design Center has built more than 700,000 square meters of physical space, housed more than 1,800 design studios, and registered nearly 8,500 outstanding designers.
Red Star Macalline provides scene experience, customer base and full-link operation empowerment for the material library.
Zhu Jiagui pointed out: “The M+ material library is a key step for Macalline to shift from ‘store operation’ to ‘ecological service’. We are not just providing a display space, but building a complete link from design inspiration to material implementation.”
As the top listed design company in China, Matrix is an integrator of design and supply chain.
Wang Guan, founder of Matrix, emphasized: “If designers don’t have materials, there is no way to start. They should have materials and budget first, and then do space design.” Matrix opens up its internal product selection capabilities and supply chain resources to the outside world, providing professional product selection endorsements and continuously updated material libraries for the material library.
Consumers prefer to watch offline, so cooperation with platforms like Red Star Macalline is an inevitable choice.
As a spatial intelligent design agent and industrial ecological platform focusing on the field of human settlements, Dark Shell Technology relies on millions of professional private data assets in the industry to self-develop multiple industry-specific large models, and has the dual leading advantages of “technology + aesthetics”.
At present, Dark Shell AI has more than 200,000 designers and home furnishing practitioners, more than 100 leading enterprise partners, more than 1,300 home furnishing brands and art ecological partners, and has accumulated millions of pan-home furnishing product resources.
As a “spatial intelligent design agent platform available to everyone”, Dark Shell AI also demonstrates its core capabilities and experience of being “more professional, more accurate and easier to use”.
Huang Yanhong, CEO of Dark Shell Technology, demonstrated how AI can reshape the design and material selection process, “From the floor plan to the decoration intention drawing, it can be completed in 5 minutes. In the past, customers were easily lost after visiting the store for consultation. Now, multiple categories of materials can be inserted into the renderings within 2 minutes, and the owner’s needs can be quickly responded to in 30 seconds.” Dark Shell Technology empowers design with AI and links transactions with design, so that every material in the design plan can be accurately traced and purchased, truly realizing “what you see is what you get.”
Zhu Jiagui summarized the industry’s pain points as “three difficulties”: the loss of information in renderings and delivery is unimaginable; it is difficult for designers to find materials; China’s supply chain capability ranks first in the world, but good materials cannot find users.
The M+ material library is the solution idea given by the three parties working together – to provide designers with a one-stop material library that has been verified by professional product selection, to provide brands with lightweight market verification and access paths, to build a closed loop of trust from “a flash of inspiration” to “within reach” for consumers, and to provide new consumers with a commercial content innovation of Service B and Link C.
Jiang Xue said that there is no shortage of good designs and good materials. What is lacking is the ability to connect the entire chain from design drawings to construction completion.
The M+ Material Library aims to reconnect this broken chain.
She shared the results of Matrix’s survey of private home designers: What designers need most is not a massive amount of materials, but “selected, work-level, safe and trustworthy materials.”
She believes that in the future, material selection will enter a new stage of data-driven and intelligent matching. However, AI has improved design efficiency and creativity, but it still cannot replace the real material experience, and trustworthy offline scenarios are still needed.
The trust, supervision mechanism, stable supply chain and digital collaboration that Red Star Macalline has established with consumers over the years are the reasons for the tripartite cooperation.
Next three years: 10-city layout to form a national material selection network
In accordance with Red Star Macalline’s “30 + 10 + 1” strategy, the M+ Material Library will complete the layout in 10 cities in the next three years and gradually become a standard feature of all M+ design centers.
By then, the material library will form a design material selection network covering the whole country. If the products of brands or suppliers enter any of the libraries, they will have access to the cutting-edge channels of high-end design across the country.
After the network is put into operation, the material selection efficiency, consumer trust and brand circulation costs of the home decoration design industry are expected to usher in systematic improvements.
“This is a new beginning in the era of shrinking home furnishing competition.” Zhu Jiagui called, “I hope that in the process of respecting design and exploring new market demands, we will work with more and more ecological partners to create new developments in China’s home furnishing industry and create a better home life.”
