China’s CATL on Aug 10 opened its first ever bricks-and-mortar store, with an enormous site in Chengdu showcasing nearly 100 electric vehicle models from dozens of automakers, in a move intended to beef up its brand image as a leading EV battery maker.

Why it matters: Entitled NING Space, the store is the latest brand-building initiative by the world’s largest battery maker by volume, which not only wants its automobile clients to be familiar with its products but hopes to influence end customers’ preferences, as smaller competitors chase market share by cutting prices.

Details: CATL’s first major physical location accounts for approximately 13,800 square meters (148,542 square feet) of Chengdu, the capital of China’s populous southwestern province of Sichuan.

• The facility has nearly 100 EV models on display, including top-sellers such as the Tesla Model 3, Li Auto’s L7, and the Aito M7, all powered by CATL’s lithium-ion batteries.
• It does not serve as a sales location but focuses on brand building and customer education. As Vice President Li Ping emphasized to participants at the site’s opening ceremony, CATL does not make or sell cars, Caixin reported (in Chinese).
• CATL said the NING Space will play an educational role, with its employees there to provide customers with tailored recommendations and to hold regular marketing events to tell users the EV story from a battery-maker’s perspective.
• Meanwhile, the battery giant is establishing an independent after-sales service network to provide personal buyers with maintenance and repairs for EV batteries. It boasts 112 such service centers nationwide, versus more than 600 business-to-business locations.

Context: CATL on July 26 reported mixed results for the first half of this year while its net profit jumped 10.4% from a year earlier to RMB 22.9 billion ($3.2 billion). Yet revenue dropped 11.9% year-on-year to RMB 167 billion over the same period, which the company attributed to a significant drop in the cost of raw materials needed to produce EVs.

• The battery supplier, headquartered in the eastern Chinese city of Ningde, remains the world’s top player in the industry, recording 137.7 gigawatt-hours (GWh) worth of batteries and securing a market share of 37.8% from January to June, according to figures published by South Korean market research agency SNE Research.
• The company has been launching advertising campaigns and attending marketing events over the past year to share its founder’s vision for green energy and showcase its signature products such as the Shenxing battery.
  

Correction: An earlier version of the article miscalculated the floor area of CATL’s first store which is 13,800 square meters (148,542 square feet), rather than 13,800 square kilometers (5,328 square miles) as mentioned.