Lotte Mart in Jamsil to transform into 'Zettaplex'
The new promotional poster for Lotte's premium store brand, Zettaplex / Courtesy of Lotte Shopping
By Kim Jae-heun
Lotte Group will reopen its Lotte Mart store in Jamsil under the new name Zettaplex on Dec. 23, after more than a year of renovation work, the company said Monday.
Zettaplex will be the largest supermarket branch run by Lotte, and accordingly, it is expected to set a new standard for shopping in the future.
Under the slogan “We have everything you want,” Zettaplex will offer a variety of wines, furniture, lifestyle and animal-related products, as well as processed foods.
The Bottle Bunker wine store will open on the first floor, which stretches for 1,322 square meters. Bottle Bunker takes up 70 percent of the whole floor, and it will sell 4,000 kinds of wine, with prices ranging from 10,000 won ($8.40) to 100 million won ($84,040).
The wine store will classify its products by their origins under three themes: “signal,” “food pairing” and “moment.”
There will also be a tasting zone for 80 kinds of alcoholic beverages. Customers can exchange cash for credits on an electric bracelet provided at the store and purchase 50-milliliter glasses of wine of their choice.
The specialty wine collection store Bottle Bunker at Zettaplex / Courtesy of Lotte Shopping
Zettaplex will also have a new grocery store that offers 30 percent more products than other Lotte Mart stores in the country. The shelves displaying food there are 30 percent longer than the normal ones used at ordinary supermarkets as well.
The fruit section has also been upgraded with 12 different kinds of bananas, 22 types of tomatoes and 11 varieties of berries. Fruits are categorized by their tastes, such as “sweet” and “citrus.”
The salad zone sells more than 150 kinds of products, including vegetables farmed together with fish, a system of aquaculture known as aquaponics in which the waste produced by farmed fish or other aquatic life supplies nutrients for plants grown hydroponically.
Zettaplex features aquariums in its fishery stores and there is a specialty store in the meat section selling only lamb.
Considering the trend of increased demand for contactless shopping, Zettaplex is introducing a smart payment system where users can scan products' barcodes with their mobile devices using Lotte Mart's app.
“Zettaplex is a project that shows the future version of Lotte Mart. We will make it into an iconic store that suits the modern lifestyles of our customers,” Lotte Mart CEO Kang Sung-hyun said.