EXIT: more than a shop – a call to get out of your comfort zone

Opened officially three months ago under the slogan #BeBoldToExit, the ‘EXIT’ shop proposes to offer a different approach to retail, calling on its clientele to “get out their comfort zone” and try new things.

To learn more about this concept and the ideas behind it, the Times interviewed the shop owner, who goes by the single-name of Jolian.

“I called it EXIT as you see in our slogan [Be Bold to Exit], and that means that you need to get out of your comfort zone,” said Jolian, adding that is both a call to people in general and a reminder to himself.

“Just like me: how I had been working for a company for over a decade. That’s so ‘comfy’ as you have your salary every month and your concerns are thinking about how to use your holiday or where to travel to. That’s pretty much the mindset of most Macau employees, to save some money to go on vacations and repeat this [process] every year. I was used to that zone too, until I realized how boring it was.”

For Jolian, the secret of enjoying life fully is to “get out of that zone” and take risks. “It is not easy but you have to do it. If you never step out and [take] that first step you won’t have any future, you just keep repeating your life year after year.”

This applies to his business also in the sense that “trying something new” can be trying skateboarding, an activity that most people can do irrespective of their age or socio-economic conditions. “It is not an expensive thing,” he said.

Experience to change the retail sector

Jolian explained that he has been passionate about skateboarding for over a decade and has been skateboarding for over 14 years. When he started to think about creating a new business, a lot of ideas popped into his mind.

“Some of them were about things that already existed and were too common and some others were completely new but so hard to achieve. So combining these ideas into a concept and joining with my previous experience of over a decade of working in retail business, I arrived at this new concept of combining that retail experience with something that did not [currently] exist in Macau and something I am passionate about,” he said.

“I love street fashion, but there are already so many street fashion boutiques in Macau, so I thought about skateboarding. At that time, of course, I had a lot of people telling me not to do that and that it would die soon, et cetera. But my feeling was always that maybe [these people] just don’t know how to run a business or how to run a retail shop and that is why many people, when starting something, see it immediately fail. But if you know how to run it and how to promote it, I believe that it can be anything. You can sell any product, and it can be a success.”

Picking up from the previous skate shop in Macau, which did not do well, Jolian said he wanted to add some unique factors and that quickly led to the idea to add snowboarding gear to street fashion and skateboards as an unique combination that Macau had never seen before.

A fan of the sport for over four years, Jolian says that snowboarding, although similar to skateboarding, assumes a very different feeling and mood.

“It is a very good travel experience, not just a sport. It is a whole set of travel experiences. You go to the mountains and you have [broader] views. If you have never tried, you will never know.”

Skateboarding with a personal touch

Assuming skateboarding is accountable for the major slice of the business, Jolian notes that his ambitions concerning the sport do not stop at selling its gear.

“We want to invite people to try skateboarding [first]. Most of our clients are not people with great expertise at the sport, they just saw on social media or somewhere else and they see the shop and are willing to give it a try,” Jolian said. But this is the moment when the shop can surpass the service of most other shops.

“We are not just selling stuff – we have service, and we give advice,” Jolian said, recalling a time when he was young and went to Hong Kong to buy his first skateboarding gear, and nobody would help him to choose the right gear.

“I remember how nobody cared. How nobody helped to introduce the different products and to choose the right one or the right parts according to your characteristics,” adding that retail shops must evolve with time and provide a close and more personalized service to their customers.

“Before there was no competition from online shopping and all that and even if people did not feel welcomed, they had no choice. Nowadays, if a retail shop does not provide more to its clients than just selling, they face severe competition from online [retailers].”

The shop owner also noted that this is the reason behind the open design of the shelves, where customers can “feel” the product.

Although most of the clientele of EXIT are locals, Jolian noted that about 20% of his customers that are Chinese tourists, noting, “China is very big, but they don’t have that many skate shops. Maybe for some, it is easier or convenient to buy here in Macau and take it to China.”

Greater skate ambitions

There is only one problem: Macau does not currently possess a skate park where people can freely and safely practice their skills. “This is a very big issue,” admitted Jolian. “Without a proper place, it is difficult to progress.”

One of the greater ambitions of the shop is also to be able to gather enough people around the sport to create an official organization that can talk to the government about building up a space where skateboarding, as well as other sports, can be performed.

“If the government cannot help to build one, we can try to build it ourselves, but we need to build a skate park. Skateboarding is an everyday sport and it needs a place [in which] to develop.”

Jolian also noted that, besides recreational purposes, “a formal facility could also be used to train athletes, and this is especially important at this time since 

skateboarding will be included for the first time at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan.”

Although there is no guarantee that skateboarding – one of the five that will be added to the 2020 program – will continue in later years, Jolian believes that Macau should take advantage of such momentum to develop the sport, noting that, contrary to many other sports where a large group of people is needed and many years and even generations of training are needed to reach a high competitive level, with skateboarding, a single talent is enough to reach such a level.

“If Hong Kong has, if China has and also other countries have such talents I don’t see why Macau can’t have them. It’s an individual thing and does not depend on quantity.”

Jolian believes that if a skate park could be built in Macau now, “maybe in eight years we can have an athlete to represent Macau on such important level competitions.”

“This would help us too, not just in business terms, but in the society in general, because nowadays all the kids are just stuck into their phones and that’s not what we want – we want them to have a healthy body and healthy mind. They need to raise their heads.”

“Although we are a small business, we do aim to make a big influence.”