Global businesses expand further to embrace China opportunities

BEIJING -- An array of global companies have been further increasing their presence in China, setting sight on the vast business opportunities here.

These companies include sportswear brands, convenience store chains, coffeehouse chains and even those in the promising elderly care industry.

Their recent expansion in the country, particularly in the western regions and smaller cities, has demonstrated their confidence in the medium and long-term prospects of the world's second-largest economy.

In one of the latest such moves, Under Armour's Curry Brand, which the American sportswear company launched in partnership with NBA star Stephen Curry in 2020, opened its first global store in China earlier this month.

More than 8,000 customers visited the store in Chengdu, the capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, on the first day of opening.

Chengdu is a major city in southwest China, with a large young consumer base, a rich basketball culture and a robust retail market, the Curry Brand said.

The Curry Brand hopes to leverage Chengdu's location, vigorous consumption and basketball culture to attract Chinese consumers, thus opening a new chapter in the Chinese and global markets.

Driven by strong demand from Chinese consumers, Japanese clothing retail giant Uniqlo is also upbeat about the Chinese market.

Uniqlo plans to open nearly 20 new stores in China in September and October, adding to its more than 900 directly-operated stores on the Chinese mainland.

Foreign convenience store chains and coffeehouse chains have made further inroads into much smaller cities in a bid to tap the purchasing power of consumers there.

Japanese convenience store chains Lawson and FamilyMart have accelerated their expansion into smaller, more remote cities in China this year, opening new stores in the suburban counties of Chengdu and the cities of Meishan and Deyang in Sichuan.

With a new store in the city of Huanggang earlier this year, U.S. coffee giant Starbucks now has outlets in all 13 prefecture-level cities in central China's Hubei Province, 16 years after opening its first Hubei outlet in the provincial capital of Wuhan.

"Currently, Starbucks has more than 200 stores in Hubei, with a variety of store models and products constantly being innovated to meet the diverse demands of customers," said Shen Can, general manager of Starbucks Central and Western China Region.

Despite the rise of local coffee chains such as Luckin Coffee and Manner Coffee, Starbucks remains optimistic about the Chinese market and is confident in achieving its target of increasing its store count on the Chinese mainland to 9,000 by 2025.

By June, Starbucks had over 7,300 outlets in China with 213 newly opened in the April-June quarter, when its net income in the country grew 5 percent quarter-on-quarter to 733.8 million U.S. dollars.

Starbucks will continue to invest in China for the long term and is confident in the long-term opportunities in the Chinese market, according to Molly Liu, Co-CEO of Starbucks China.

Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffeehouse chain, is also committed to the Chinese market. It has boosted its presence in smaller cities around the country, like Yancheng, Suqian, Huizhou, Langfang and Puyang. By June, it had 907 stores in 71 Chinese cities.

As China's population is quickly aging, some foreign businesses have even ventured into the elderly service industry to tap business opportunities from the booming silver economy.

Singaporean company Keppel opened a high-quality senior home in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, earlier this year. The facility, with a floor area of nearly 20,000 square meters, offers about 400 beds.

The fast-growing global senior population and longer average life expectancy are fuelling the demand for quality elderly care services, said Louis Lim Lu-yi, CEO of Keppel's real estate division.

Keppel seeks to build the senior home in Nanjing into a model for high-quality elderly care services and copy it to more regions, said Lim, who was optimistic about the future of the Chinese market.

The Chinese market has great potential in the medium to long term, and with this starting point, Keppel is committed to empowering China's aging society towards a better future, Lim said.