Hard at work in my quiet think tank
A placid, cozy environment fostering focused thinking and unwavering concentration on books is what study lounges are all about. Ideal for students with limited options as after-school study spaces, because home is a hassle, libraries are full, cafes rather costly, 24-hour eateries full of distracting chatter. Ideal, too, for younger professionals preparing for higher-level exams to further their career or increase their knowledge. And all relatively cheap.
The study lounge is an imported business model pioneered in South Korea and Japan. Quite a few study lounge operators in China have said they learned what a study lounge is from a Korean TV drama, Reply1988. In fact, several study lounges in Chinese cities have been named 1988.
The demand for study lounges rose in China because people can hardly find a tranquil place to study after finishing college. It is hard for them to find a place in a university even if they manage to enter the campus. There are relatively few public libraries even in big cities. And even students on campus need a peaceful place to focus on studies.
Before 2018 there were few study lounges in China, and the few that existed were mainly in first- and secondtier cities such as Guangzhou, Suzhou and Tianjin. In Beijing the first study lounge opened in 2018. Yet by last year they had become popular nationwide.
The market organization iiMedia said that there were about 1,000 newly opened study lounges nationwide last year and the number of paid users rose from 850,000 in 2018 to 2.3 million in 2019.
In iiMedia’s earlier estimate, the number of paid users in study lounges was expected to rise to 7.8 million nationwide this year.
But the pandemic has dealt a crushing blow to the industry. Since personal contact in a closed environment is unavoidable, the pandemic forced all study lounges to shut down for several months.
Lou Qingxiao, founder of Xinliuzaowu, one of Beijing’s earliest study lounge chains, which opened in 2018, said its study lounge near Renmin University of China had already made ends meet and even made some profits before the pandemic. But their second franchised study lounge in Beijing was opened just before the outbreak.
Li Hang and Zhang Yang, cofounders of Sishiloushi, an independent study lounge in Beijing, said their business is gradually returning to normal, but they still have to play things by the ear. Yet even before COVID-19 broke out, the industry’s profit model was neither promising nor clear.
“Rent is a major fixed cost for study lounges, especially in first-tier cities,” Lou said. As such, charges for using study lounges need to be relatively high.
Li said that in a first-tier city such as Beijing, rentals comprise more than a half of a study lounge’s monthly operation cost.
According to Lou, the study lounge industry is a result of consumption upgrading that “provides better time and space experience, and helps users to enhance their knowledge and efficiency while saving time”. He sounds optimistic about the industry’s commercial prospects, though, “because it’s a blue ocean with less competition”.
Li and Zhang do not consider study lounges to be simple substitutes for public libraries, as the former provide a better learning experience that people cannot get in free public libraries.
“Privately operated study lounges like ours actually make up for the shortage of public infrastructure and public services, and we are willing to cooperate with the government to better serve the public,” Li said.