SHOPPING malls targeting residents with fat wallets are popping up in Shenzhen, as their major retail group owners were confident of the spending power of Shenzhen residents in the next few years, Chinese-language newspapers reported yesterday.
Rainbow Department Store Co. Ltd., a Shenzhen-based chain store, opened its Dream On store in Futian CBD on Nov. 25, its first upmarket shopping center.
KK Mall, a luxury shopping mall in the prosperous Caiwuwei finance area in Luohu District, opened a day later.
It carries more than 100 prominent brands as well as Shenzhen s first IMAX digital cinema.
On the same day in the mall, China Resources Vanguard Co. Ltd., (abbreviated as CR Vanguard), one of the largest retail chains in China, opened a new convenience store, Blt, which has a majority of imported products. The Shenzhen Blt is the first in South China and fourth in the country.
Shenzhen consumers have strong spending power, said Yang Xia, an analyst with China Merchants Securities. The lack of high-end shopping malls and quality products in Shenzhen has driven many people to Hong Kong.
Due to the yuan appreciation and worrying about food safety problems, many Shenzhen people have taken to doing their shopping in Hong Kong for daily necessities, such as detergents, shower gels, shampoos, soy sauce, condiments, monosodium glutamate and facial tissues.
An average of about 20,000 Hong Kong residents came to Shenzhen for groceries daily in 1986, according to a Xinhua News Agency report in January that year. Today, fewer Hong Kong people come to Shenzhen for farm produce and other products as they had done for decades.
It will be a boost to [Shenzhen] retail business as long as they can attract at least half the customers back to Shenzhen, Yang said.
Retailers were confident of the new stores success in the future.
Encouraging private consumption is one of the top priorities of the Central Government in its next five-year economic development plan. (Mu Zi)
