AS Watson Group (ASW) today celebrated the opening of its 500th Watsons store in Mainland China, marking an important milestone of the Company's plan to reach 1,000 stores in the Mainland and to exceed 10,000 stores worldwide within the coming two years.
ASW is the world's largest international health and beauty retailer, currently with a portfolio of 8,600 stores across 34 markets in Asia and Europe. Its luxury perfumeries and cosmetics retail division is also the leading operator in Europe.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the symbolic store located at Mall 818 in Shanghai, Group Managing Director Mr Dominic Lai said, "Despite the global economic recession, we managed to maintain our growth momentum while having tight control on costs. In the first six months of this year, we achieved a like-for-like positive sales growth of 4% in a market context which remains challenging, especially in some parts of Europe. I am pleased to see that in many places, our growth rate exceeds that of the market."
"Our global expansion plan is to exceed 10,000 stores by 2011. Next year alone we will accelerate growth by opening 67% more new stores than this year, representing two new stores a day throughout the year," Mr Lai said.
"Store opening aside, our game plan is to deliver sales growth by focusing on building customer loyalty and growing basket size. We are investing significantly in building our customer relationship management platforms and our loyalty programmes in more and more markets. Currently we have 28 million customers in our database. And to drive differentiation, we will increase collaboration with strategic suppliers to improve category management and bring more innovative products to our customers at great value. Increasing our own brand product offers is also high on the agenda."
In Mainland China, Watsons is the leading retailer in the fragmented RMB500 billion health and beauty market*. Every week, over 3 million customers shop at Watsons which currently has presence in 80 cities, that is 60% of the cities in the Mainland.
*Euromonitor Report, May 29, 2009
