Holiland's all-pink Nanjing store turns a 28-year-old bakery into a design brand

Holiland (est. 1992) was one of China's best-known bakery chains but read as dated and 'earthy' next to new-generation tea and dessert brands. In 2020 the challenge was to make a legacy bakery feel contemporary and worth photographing, without changing its core product line.

Give a 28-year-old cake chain two opposite concept worlds — a cold industrial 'Lab' and an all-pink 'Pink' — and let the stores themselves be the brand campaign.

In 2020 Holiland opened two flagship concept stores: Holiland Lab in Shanghai (May, about 150 sqm, concrete and brushed-metal industrial aesthetics with futuristic screens and installations), then Holiland Pink in Nanjing (completed June 2020, 234 sqm, by DAS Lab). Pink was conceived as a 'seed nursery': pink walls and fixtures, cultivation-vessel displays translated into shelves and counters, five dessert zones, and pink-only products such as the 花花 line and capsule-shaped 'healing' cakes.

The stores became check-in destinations — industry coverage said tens of thousands came to photograph them — and food media dubbed Holiland 'a design company disguised as a dessert shop'. The format proved repeatable: a pink-themed store opened in Changsha in 2022 as Central China's first, and the Nanjing store was entered into the CREDAWARD 地建师设计大奖.

In 2020, Holiland — founded in 1992 and long one of China's best-known bakery chains — opened two flagship concept stores that looked like nothing it had built before: a sci-fi industrial 'lab' in Shanghai and an all-pink 'Pink' in Nanjing.

Nanjing Holiland Pink (234 sqm, designed by DAS Lab, completed June 2020) was conceived as a 'pink cultivation room': the space imagined as a greenhouse where seeds grow in pink light, with petri-dish display fixtures translated into shelves and counters, and pink-only products — the 花花 line, capsule-shaped 'healing' cakes — completing the world.

The two stores were not one redesign but a declared strategy: 'one store, one design; one store, one theme; one store, one product line.' Marketing and design media framed the openings as Holiland turning its retail spaces into experiments and brand media, drawing tens of thousands of visitors to photograph them.

Two opposite design worlds — cold lab vs warm pink — give each store a sharp identity and make the pair newsworthy together.

Designing the store as a seed nursery lets the space itself tell the baking story instead of just decorating a shop.

Pink-only products extend the store concept into the menu, so the experience and the goods reinforce each other.

Opening stores as media events lets a legacy chain refresh its image without abandoning its national product line.

A legacy brand can reboot through its physical world: instead of one redesign, commit to 'one store, one design, one theme, one product line' so every new space is a media event.

The concept-store route became a repeatable format: Holiland later opened further themed stores, including a pink-themed Changsha store in 2022 (Central China's first) with the same pink walls, glass display windows and warm lighting. The Nanjing project was entered into the CREDAWARD 地建师设计大奖, and marketing case studies cited the stores as proof that physical retail design could revive a legacy food brand.