Wumart, 30, to embrace digital field

Wumart Group, one of the largest retailers in China that also owns Metro China, said it will fully embrace "digital intelligence" and accelerate overseas expansion of its subsidiary brands, as it celebrated its 30th anniversary recently.

Zhang Wenzhong, founder of Wumart, said in an interview with China Daily that amid a slowdown in the retail industry, companies must improve their efficiency and simplify processes to survive, but should not simply link digitalization with profitability.

"Wumart aims to fully embrace digital intelligence, while returning to the essence of business by improving supply chain management to offer low-price products with high quality," Zhang said.

He emphasized that Wumart will continue to accelerate the development of Dmall, a cloud-based e-commerce retailer of Wumart. Dmall is known for its operating system that can manage various operations from placing orders, receiving, sorting, delivering and displaying goods, as well as inventory management.

Dmall also provides these services to other retail companies under the software-as-a-service or SaaS retailing cloud model. Zhang said Dmall has already empowered over 600 retailers globally and covered more than 10,000 shopping malls.

Dmall filed for an IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange recently. In the past, it had planned an IPO in the United States. Its updated prospectus showed that it is planning to enter the Brunei and Indonesia markets this year and plans to hire about 500 research and development personnel with overseas industry experience, to support its overseas development in markets like Southeast Asia.

Zhang said the digitalization process of Metro has been "very fast" as the online business accounts for 30 percent of its total business, up from 1 percent when Wumart acquired Metro's business in China in 2019.

"Many retailers are actually losing money from online sales, which is unsustainable. But Metro's online sales are profitable, which will put it in a strong position in the industry in the future," he said.

At a recent news conference, Wumart announced the full implementation of the "everyday low price" strategy, which aims to phase out traditional promotional discounts through meticulous cost controls and supply chain management.