Amsterdam | Chinese EV manufacturers are still new in Europe. While Polestar, BYD, and Nio already sound familiar to Europeans, Zeekr is the latest EV challenger brand to bring its luxurious electric cars to the Old Continent expending great marketing effort. A mega showroom in Amsterdam is just the beginning. invidis was on site.
Car showrooms in city centers are a popular concept with which established European manufacturers are looking to gain more visibility. Large car palaces on arterial roads on the outskirts of the city are no longer sufficient to reach new customer groups. New car brands, in particular, which sell predominantly online and lack a broad dealer network often rely on showrooms in pedestrian zones with impressive digital signage. In Munich, more than ten automobile brands have moved into the pedestrian zone since the pandemic.
But so far no car manufacturer has made as big of a splurge in terms of space and signage as Geely’s subsidiary Zeekr. The Chinese brand started in Sweden and the Netherlands at the end of 2023. Shortly before Christmas, a Zeekr luxury showroom had opened on 2,000 m² of sales space on the most expensive shopping street in the Netherlands.
The city location overlooking the Rokin Canal is close to many famous Amsterdam attractions such as the Rijksmuseum, Dam Square, and the Royal Palace. It is intended to offer customers a luxurious, exclusive, and curated brand experience in a historic building. Zeekr also operates a showroom in Stockholm. In China, the electric car market already has 300 Zeekr Centers, Spaces, Houses and Delivery Centers. Five more Zeekr centers are scheduled to open in Europe in the coming months – one of them being in Germany.
Lots of space and LED everywhere
The Zeekr showroom stands out in Amsterdam’s narrow shopping street. Housed in a former department store with a wide open window front, the massive LED installations can be seen from afar. From a digital signage perspective, the Zeekr showroom is a massive LED overkill. In addition to wall-filling, fine pixelpitch LEDs, Zeekr also invested in two room-dividing transparent LED walls that give structure to the large 2,000 m² exhibition space.
The image quality of the LED is still perfect a few weeks after opening, but the poor viewing angle points to a cheap SMD-based no-name LED. But these are details that only industry experts notice. The overall presentation with the massive LED walls is a real statement that consumers can only rarely experience.
The Chinese automobile group Geely is the majority owner of Volvo, Polestar, and Smart, among others
