Xiaomi’s finally going offline and to retail stores

In case you missed it, Xiaomi’s officially going to offline stores in the Philippines. That’s right – you’ll be able to finally buy your favorite Xiaomi gadget from retail stores instead of ordering through Lazada.

The move is surprising and oddly enough, unsurprising in a couple of ways. Xiaomi’s always maintained that they are an e-commerce company first and foremost, which makes the move unprecedented, if only they haven’t done the same thing before in India. It’s also unsurprising, in a way, because the Philippines has always been an offline sales kind of country for better or for worse.

Of course going offline also entails additional costs – margins will have to be increased for stores, warehousing costs will have to be factored in as well. Mi Philippines lays everything out in their Facebook post.

As you all know, there are additional operational expenses that we will incur once we go offline, which is why we had to adjust our prices. Certain government regulations prevent us from having an online and offline price, thus, we are forced to maintain the offline prices for Mi products across all selling channels.

So there you go. We’ve heard rumors of Xiaomi’s official offline partner (it’s a distributor of other brands as well, which include Alcatel and Huawei), as well as the first rumblings of the move from Xiaomi’s own service centers. As for when the offline sales will begin, Xiaomi isn’t too forthcoming with the details. We’ll update you once we hear more.