Chow Tai Fook Expanding China Store Count

RAPAPORT... Pandemic or not, Chow Tai Fook has no intention of slowing its expansion into China, with plans to open approximately 450 stores on the mainland during the current fiscal year, managing director Kent Wong told Rapaport News. A vast majority of those new locations will be in tier-4 and tier-5 cities, which have population sizes of around 200,000 to 300,000, and are growing at a faster pace than the bigger centers like Beijing and Shanghai, Wong said in an interview on Rapaport's Recovery Webinar Series last week. Despite the store expansion, Wong recognized that Covid-19 had accelerated online shopping among consumers. The Hong Kong jeweler is also investing heavily in its digital outreach, to enhance its interaction with consumers between online and offline platforms, he stressed. "The future will be this O2O [online to offline] with [a] human touch, and we continue to invest heavily in these channels," he said. Watch the full interview below: