During the day on the lower floors, upwardly mobile young people browse the cornucopia of consumer options, marvelling at snazzy clothing, cutting-edge art and slick sneakers.
At night, on the top floor – to a thudding soundtrack of techno music and a mesmerising, room-wide light show – cash-rich financiers and successful start-up entrepreneurs party until the small hours.
The venue is TX Youth Energy Centre in Shanghai where, on a busy day, up to 40,000 people pass through the doors, anxious to see and be seen at the most vibrant spot in the city.
The centre is the creation of Hong Kong-born Dickson Szeto, a visionary real-estate specialist who personally supervised every element of design and content, resulting in a dizzyingly eclectic consumer mix that breaks the mould of the traditional city shopping centre.
The six-storey TX building, on bustling Huai Hai Road, had been an Isetan department store before it was gutted and refurbished to appeal to the youth of China’s second city. Would-be retailers have to answer a series of searching questions from the boss before setting up shop, and a flagging operation is unlikely to last beyond the first lease.
It puts intense pressure on the vendors to maintain impeccably high standards and show their most innovative side; in return, they are guaranteed a steady stream of shoppers offering an opportunity to cement consumer loyalty. Mainstream brands are not discouraged but their managers, too, are grilled at length and warned that a pedestrian, cookie-cutter approach will not pass muster.
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Szeto enlisted a series of experts in various fields to help curate the mixture – including photographer Chen Man, specialist architect Shuhei Aoyama and entertainer-designer Edison Chen. A masterstroke was to commission the Japanese art collective TeamLab to come up with a visual show, a dazzling wallscape of ever-changing shapes, images and colours, for the nightclub.
Although TX has only been open for less than two years, the concept gestated over a much longer period and harnesses the founder’s two decades of Shanghai experience. He is a man who knows the city, its tastes, the possibilities and the realities.
Szeto came to Shanghai in the mid-1990s, initially working on a Kerry Group joint venture and later with the city’s groundbreaking Xintiandi area, where traditional buildings were converted for modern restaurant and boutique usage.
When the city government began to look for expertise and ideas for a youth-driven initiative, Szeto’s name came to the fore. An official request to research the topic and formulate a master plan was accepted. The work drew on the expertise of Szeto’s company, Urban Revitalisation Force, which is involved with curated retail, urban rejuvenation, cultural development, IP incubation, community and sustainability.
“They were looking for a specialist and this is an area where I have credibility,” Szeto says. “They wanted to know how this section of Huai Hai Road could be improved in future and have a renaissance.
“After my research, I told them there is a great chance for this area to turn into a top-level youth cultural space – it can rank at international level, like Melrose in Los Angeles, Brooklyn in New York or Harajuku in Tokyo.
“My definition of the youth area was not just luxury, and not just fast fashion, but culture like street culture, or graffiti or skateboarding. We wanted it to become a cultural landmark for youth. If it was just a centre for merchandising alone, they might not come here. It is a subtle approach; we want them to keep coming back and become our friends and members, and then we can start selling them products.”
Szeto explains that the original premises were used as a traditional department store, with small counters and different fixed areas, which he says was a very stale concept.
“With TX, we wanted people to come here because they were keen to learn about new things and to meet friends and socialise,” he says. “The major architectural changes were to turn it into a more spacious, open-plan venue.”
One of the many novelties in TX is an area with virtual ski tracks, where people gear up and enter a zone with a treadmill-style moving carpet. So far, so conventional – the twist was to put the ski tracks in a gourmet bistro, where diners watch the wannabe skiers in action.
“The operator wanted to open a flagship store with 20 tracks and I said no, it has to be some kind of community space, you have to find a new format,” says Szeto. “He did – and now they have a Michelin-star chef, so people can watch skiers training through the transparent glass as they eat. It is a new experience.”
Among those enthused by the chance to create a genuinely new lifestyle concept was Canadian singer-actor Edison Chen, a member of the cultural committee that has crafted the broad mixture at TX.
“Besides having what normal shopping malls would have, it is an integrated, multi-experience destination for the community,” Chen says. “My role is as a creative person who can provide my views and perspective on contemporary culture.”
Having a major star attached to the project helped pique interest, as did high-profile events attended by celebrities who appeal to a younger crowd. The prime downtown location was also a factor: Huai Hai Road is one of the busiest thoroughfares of the city and TX stands out with its spacious forecourt and colourful LED images that run the length of the building.
The sheer wealth of options and ever-changing exhibitions aim to ensure people will return again and again.
When not on the premises supervising and observing, Szeto adheres to a fitness regimen that includes swimming and fencing, a sport he picked up during his university days in Melbourne in Australia and which proves to be a great stress reliever.
“It is a sport you can practise without a partner – you can use a model – and it is one of the rare sports where you can hit and attack,” says Szeto, 53, whose wife and daughter live in Sydney.
Spend time with Szeto and it is clear how people are quickly captivated and galvanised by the entrepreneur’s energy, down-to-earth approach and infectious, can-do Hong Kong spirit. A point of pride of his is to hire people straight from school or university, with a focus more on the ideas they can generate rather than the qualifications they have accumulated.
“We do tell them there is no easy job in the world, this is not a nine-to-five job,” he says. “New ideas and change becomes their job. They come here and become heroes!”
TX commands the Shanghai retail zeitgeist. It houses outlets that offer everything from vintage fashion to sneakers to Star Wars statuettes to a cat cafe. It is a heady mixture that gets even more intoxicating up on the top floor, late at night, where partygoers drink and dance into the early hours in the cavernous club and an adjacent techno DJ lounge.
The reputation of TX has spread, with other China cities keen to have Szeto investigate whether it can be replicated; to date, more than 80 high-level officials from different provinces have toured the complex. Right now, Shenzhen, Wuhan and Chengdu are being considered as possible TX host cities.
In the shorter term, the plan is to open a second TX-themed tower, in a renovated building just across the street, with a longer-term goal to add other Huai Hai area properties when suitable sites become available.
“I am particularly proud of the retail combination,” says Szeto when asked to pick his TX favourite.
“It is a pretty good achievement – we call it curated retail. We are not a chain store; every single content there has not happened anywhere before. It meant a lot of hard work. For someone to agree to something new, you have to spend time convincing them.”
