BEIJING, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- The British retail giant
Tesco has announced here Wednesday that it will open 10 more outlets in China
this year after its first store in Beijing opened last month.
Though no exact turnover was available for the
Beijing branch, but Ken Towle, newly-appointed CEO of Tesco China, responded
satisfactory to the 12-day trial operation.
The Beijing store was named Hymall Tesco, the first
time Tesco had added its brand name to the sign of an outlet in China.
Towle said the Hymall logo, which meant
happy-shopping in Chinese, was kept in the brand name because local customers
have got used to it.
The company said all its Chinese branches will change
their signs to Hymall Tesco gradually, but a specific timetable has yet to be
made.
With a 90 percent stake in Hymall, a top grocery
brand under the Taiwan-based Ting Hsin International Group, Tesco now has 45
Hymall stores elsewhere in China.
As the UK's largest retailing group, Tesco also plans
to introduce other areas of its business like financial products, Internet
shopping and telecom services to China, said the company.
With the opening of the Beijing outlet on Dec. 26,
Tesco has joined its international rivals -- Wal Mart, Carrefour and Metro AG in
the 2008 Olympic Game host city to share a slice of the country's booming retail
market.
China's retail sales rose 13.7 percent to 7.641
trillion yuan (979.62 billion U.S. dollars) in 2006, the latest statistics from
the National Bureau of Statistics showed.
|
