On June 7, Red Star Macalline, Matrix, and Dark Shell Technology formally reached a business strategic cooperation at the Matrix headquarters in Shenzhen. The three parties jointly announced that the first batch of M+ material library projects will be launched in the two cities of Guiyang and Zhengzhou.
This move marks that the material library, the core component of the “30 + 10 + 1” strategy of the M+ Design Center released by Red Star Macalline in March this year, has officially entered the construction stage from the planning stage, laying a solid foundation for solving material selection problems in the home decoration industry, serving thousands of citizens, and building a new design industry ecology.
For a long time, there have been significant development barriers in the home decoration industry, resulting in three major industry problems: consumers are worried that the decoration renderings are inconsistent with the actual delivery, and there is a lack of trust; designers have cumbersome material selection processes, mixed categories, and difficult to control material quality; high-quality new materials and niche product channel expansion costs are high, making it difficult to reach the end market.
Based on the current status of the industry, M+ Material Library is accurately positioned as a material selection think tank and supply chain hub for designers, striving to open up blocking points in the entire industry chain.
Zhu Jiagui, executive president of Red Star Macalline Home Furnishing Group, said that the market does not lack high-quality home products, but lacks efficient circulation channels.
The M+ material library will build a bridge of communication, allowing designers to achieve one-stop material selection, helping brands reduce channel costs, while bringing consumers a real-life consumption experience that can be touched, experienced, and implemented.
Relying on the “30 + 10 + 1” strategic plan, Red Star Macalline plans to build 30 city flagship M+ design centers, 10 M+ material libraries, and build a national designer club within three years. The material library is the core infrastructure of the entire design ecosystem.
This time, two major model projects in Guiyang and Zhengzhou were launched first, becoming an important milestone in the implementation of the strategy.
The two venues are respectively located in the No. 1 Red Star Macalline Guizhou Global Home Store and the No. 1 Henan Zhongyuan Global Home Store. The planned areas are 700 square meters and 360 square meters respectively. They are divided into five functional areas: material display, digital material selection, salon activities, shared office, and product selection and leisure.
In the material display area, all categories of home decoration materials such as stone, wood veneer, leather cloth, paint, slate, glass, etc. are displayed in different styles, supporting on-site touch and sampling. The digital material selection area incorporates dark shell AI technology, allowing users to scan the code to create material samples and preview the space matching effect with one click, truly realizing “what you see is what you get.”
The venue has also established a dynamic replacement mechanism to continuously update product categories to ensure market adaptability.
As for the reasons for giving priority to Guiyang and Zhengzhou, Jiang Xue, director of the Matrix Research Institute, said that Guiyang is the core growth pole of the southwest market, and Zhengzhou radiates throughout the Central Plains. The designer groups in the two places are active, and there is strong demand for home decoration consumption and stock renovation.
In the past, designers from second- and third-tier cities often had to travel to first-tier cities to find high-end and specialty materials, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive.
The M+ material library integrates fragmented material resources and effectively solves the problem of local material selection.
At the same time, it has also become a testing ground for niche and personalized materials, so that brands can test the regional market in a lightweight way, and then advance the national layout based on feedback, thus significantly reducing operational risks.
The smooth implementation of the M+ Material Library stems from the in-depth collaboration and complementary advantages of the three parties, which comprehensively innovate the traditional material selection model from the three dimensions of offline scenarios, professional design, and intelligent technology.
Red Star Macalline, which has been deeply involved in the home furnishing industry for 40 years, has deployed more than 300 home furnishing malls in more than 200 cities across the country, building a complete pan-home furnishing ecosystem.
As of the end of May, the physical space of M+ design centers nationwide exceeded 700,000 square meters, with more than 1,800 design studios and nearly 8,500 cooperating designers.
The platform provides mature offline scenarios, passenger flow resources and full-link operation capabilities for the material library. This layout is also a key step for Red Star Macalline to transform from traditional store operations to comprehensive ecological services.
As a leading listed design company, Matrix has strong design capabilities and supply chain integration capabilities.
Wang Guan, founder of Matrix, believes that materials are the foundation of design, and space design needs to be advanced simultaneously with material characteristics and budget.
The company will open up the product selection standards and supply chain resources accumulated over the years to the outside world, provide professional product selection endorsement for the material library, continue to iterate the high-quality material library, and empower the material selection process with professional design capabilities.
Dark Shell Technology uses AI technology to inject technological momentum into the project.
Relying on millions of industry data and self-developed exclusive large models, Dark Shell AI brings together more than 200,000 industry practitioners and cooperates with more than 1,300 home furnishing brands.
According to Huang Yanhong, CEO of Dark Shell Technology, with the help of the intelligent system, decoration intentions can be generated from floor plans in 5 minutes, material implantation renderings can be completed in 2 minutes, and customer needs can be responded to in 30 seconds, effectively reducing customer churn.
AI technology enables full-process traceability and accurate procurement of materials, allowing intelligent design to deeply connect with physical transactions.
Some industry insiders who participated in the signing ceremony pointed out that the disconnect between renderings and delivery, low efficiency in material selection, and difficulty in circulating high-quality products are the core issues restricting the development of the industry.
M+ Material Library creates a library of selected materials for designers, provides low-cost display channels for brands, and builds a solid trust system for consumers.
At the same time, the industry has also reached a consensus that AI can improve design efficiency, but it cannot replace offline real-life experience. The combination of online intelligent matching and offline physical perception is the future development direction of the material selection industry.
According to the overall strategy, in the next three years, Red Star Macalline will complete the layout of M+ material libraries in 10 cities and build them into standard supporting facilities for all M+ design centers.
After the establishment of the national material selection network, brands and suppliers stationed in the venue can rely on the network to directly access high-end design channels across the country, realizing the global circulation of resources.
By then, the material selection efficiency and consumer trust in the home decoration industry will be comprehensively improved, and brand circulation costs will continue to be optimized, pushing the industry into a new stage of intelligent and efficient development.
Zhu Jiagui said that the current home furnishing industry has entered the stage of stock competition, and this tripartite cooperation is a new starting point for the innovation and development of the industry.
In the future, Red Star Macalline will join hands with more ecological partners to deeply explore market demand, adhere to design values, and jointly promote the transformation and upgrading of China’s home furnishing industry.
The launch of the M+ Materials Library in Guiyang and Zhengzhou is a new exploration of the integrated development of design, materials, intelligence and channels, and will also establish a new operating model for the coordinated development of the entire industry.
