Suning, China’s second-largest electrical appliance retailer by sales, has a shop on almost every high street in the country, making it one of the most well-known homegrown brands. Now the company wants to turn itself into something much bigger: a cross between a Chinese Walmartand an Asian Amazon.
Walk into Suning’s new superstore in Shanghai and it is clear the transformation has begun. The first thing you see is not refrigerators or DVD players, but cosmetics.
The company scrambled to open the store in September to take advantage of China’s peak appliance shopping season, the national-day holiday that began at the start of this month.