Source | Lingshou ID | lingshouke Author | Shili

If we categorize recent events in the retail circle, "leadership change" would be a high-frequency term.

From Aldi, which focuses on hard discount, to Sam's Club, a representative of membership warehouse stores, to Yonghui, which is in the deep waters of "Fat Donglai-style reform," these three companies, each with different business formats and scales, have completed the handover of their top executives within a few months.

On the surface, these are three unrelated personnel adjustments. Looking deeper, they point to the same issue: against the backdrop of slowing growth, intensifying competition, and a comprehensive rewrite of consumer expectations, the marginal effects of existing models are weakening, and retail companies have to use "changing leaders" to complete a deeper systemic restructuring.

Aldi: Achieving Localized Hard Discount

On October 10, Aldi China completed a watershed personnel adjustment: former CEO Christoph Schwaiger stepped down, and former China Managing Director Chen Jia was promoted to CEO effective October 1, reporting directly to Aldi's global CEO. This is Aldi's second CEO since entering China and its first local leader.

To summarize this personnel change in one sentence: Aldi's route in China has evolved from trial to maturity, and now it needs someone who understands China better and understands the supply chain to truly scale this hard discount model.

Looking back, when Aldi entered China in 2019, it did not directly copy Germany's "extreme affordability" model. Instead, it chose to open stores in mid-to-high-end communities, with exquisite decoration and a high proportion of imported and premium products, more like a community "premium supermarket," targeting middle-class customers.

But soon, market feedback showed that the "light premium" path neither won over price-sensitive consumers nor formed a clear moat. So from the end of 2023, Aldi China pivoted to "quality and low price," trying to return to the hard discount track. It continuously reduced prices on high-frequency daily necessities such as meat, vegetables, eggs, milk, rice, flour, and oil, with even greater price cuts on private-label products, and significantly reduced SKUs.

This shift quickly showed in the numbers. Public information shows that in 2024, Aldi's fresh food sales in the Shanghai market grew by 38%, and nearly a quarter of Shanghai households became its fresh food customers.

So, it's not hard to understand why Chen Jia was chosen to take over at this point.

Before joining Aldi in 2023, Chen Jia worked at Walmart and Metro, mainly responsible for procurement, supply chain management, and private-label business. After joining Aldi, as China Managing Director, she directly participated in and drove the strategic shift.

Under her push, the share of private-label products was raised to about 90%, SKUs were significantly tightened, and private-label products became the main force for price reductions. At the same time, "going out of Shanghai into Jiangsu" accelerated store expansion in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang area, which together supported the aforementioned growth in fresh food sales.

Now she has become the second CEO of Aldi China, which itself sends a signal: the group is beginning to value the Chinese market and is willing to hand more decision-making power to an operator who understands both the local market and the supply chain.

But the real challenges lie ahead. First, scale remains Aldi's weakness. As of September 2025, Aldi had only 79 stores in Shanghai and Jiangsu. In the hard discount track, this scale is still small compared to local supermarkets and emerging discount brands. Limited procurement volume means it's hard to get low enough prices when negotiating with suppliers, and low prices are precisely the lifeline of the hard discount model.

Moreover, once it expands beyond Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, the cost structure will undergo a qualitative change. As stores expand to more cities, transportation radii lengthen, and regional warehousing, cold chain networks, and execution teams all need to be rebuilt, driving up logistics and labor costs. For a business model whose core logic is "extreme cost compression and everyday low prices," how to expand without being eroded by costs is a calculation the operator must get right.

More importantly, the competitive environment. This year, the hard discount track has been particularly fierce. Hema NB has opened nearly 300 stores, while Meituan's Happy Monkey, JD's discount supermarket, and a batch of local players like Wumart, Lianhua, and Zhongbai are strengthening their low-price capabilities and supply chain advantages through private labels, direct sourcing from origins, and instant delivery.

For Aldi to be remembered in this red ocean, it needs to deliver better results than competitors in product structure, price perception, and store efficiency over the long term.

Therefore, this leadership change is more like a transfer of power. Chen Jia is not just taking over a growing business but a high-difficulty problem: with limited store numbers and local competitors already spreading out, can she use a more localized and financially sound supply chain to truly sustain the "low price, high quality" promise until the day of national expansion?

Sam's Club: Rebuilding the Supply Chain with Localization

On October 27, Walmart China officially announced that former Alibaba Group Vice President Liu Peng had joined as President of Sam's Club China, reporting directly to Walmart China President and CEO Zhu Xiaojing. Less than a year after the previous acting president, Jane Ewing, took office, this rapid leadership change underscores its significance.

A business core that contributes over two-thirds of Walmart China's revenue is now proactively changing its helmsman, sending a signal that is not simple.

In the past few years, Sam's Club has expanded rapidly in store and membership numbers, basically completing a "strong presence" in major cities. But precisely because of this rapid development, market expectations for it have undergone a qualitative change.

The former "buy without thinking" no longer holds. Today's users not only care about price but also whether quality is stable, product selection is thoughtful, and service keeps up.

With other formats intensifying competition, Sam's Club will have to answer a serious question: what will it rely on to retain more people?

Liu Peng's resume almost precisely matches Sam's Club's current "reinforcement points." He has retail fundamentals from Suning, understanding stores, supply chains, and fulfillment efficiency; and he also has digital system thinking from Alibaba, where he led Taobao brand, cross-border e-commerce, and user operations.

Simply put, he knows both "finding goods" and "finding people," and how to use data to find and retain people. These are highly relevant to Sam's Club's current needs: to supplement the uniqueness of global selection and to refine the operations of its significant online membership base.

But to improve on Sam's Club's existing reputation and product selection, Liu Peng faces at least three challenges.

First, redefining product strength. In the past, Sam's Club built a "buy without thinking" brand perception through hit products and imported goods. But with supply change disputes, the removal of some high-reputation products, and rapidly changing user needs, Sam's Club's "exclusivity" is at risk of being diluted. Sam's Club needs to do subtraction and precise calculation in its product structure—what to introduce, what to stick with, and what to localize.

Second, re-integrating online operations. Sam's Club's online business is growing fast, but it's still a distance from "refined operations." How to make the mini-program and app not just a transaction entry but a platform for membership operations and data insights will determine Sam's Club's future digital depth.

Third, the磨合 of organizational culture. The Walmart and Sam's Club systems emphasize process, standards, and discipline, while Alibaba's "playbook gene" is fast, iterative, and innovative. One is more stable, the other more agile; this could be complementary or misaligned.

In the past two years, voices saying Sam's Club has "changed" have been endless: frequent supply changes, price increases, severe stockouts... But it is precisely this magnifying-glass attention that shows Sam's Club has become both a "consumer benchmark" and an "industry sample."

The fact is, Sam's Club has not deviated from its underlying logic of "creating value for members." It's just that amid a faster pace, business expansion, and intensified competition, it needs to "deliver on trust" more intelligently, more carefully, and with more endurance.

It can be said that Sam's Club currently lacks neither stories nor past achievements. If it can truly solidify product strength, tighten member relationships, and deepen digitalization, it will remain China's most worthy retail benchmark to study. If, on this basis, Liu Peng, with his dual background in traditional retail and Alibaba digitalization, can make breakthroughs and innovations, that would undoubtedly be an even better outcome.

Yonghui: Using People for Transformation

On September 19, 2025, Yonghui Superstores announced the appointment of Wang Shoucheng as CEO, filling a vacancy of nearly half a year. On October 13, he made his first public appearance as new CEO at Yonghui's new product launch, which was also Yonghui's first systematic introduction of store reform progress through an offline press conference.

From a timing perspective, this personnel appointment is highly synchronized with Yonghui's accelerated transformation pace over the past two years. Since 2024, Yonghui has initiated a deep adjustment of its strategic operations, drawing on the Fat Donglai model to drive store reforms. In September of the same year, Miniso founder Ye Guofu became Yonghui's largest shareholder through his company. In March 2025, Ye Guofu participated in establishing a reform leadership group and personally served as its head to push forward a new round of comprehensive Fat Donglai-style reform.

Against this backdrop, choosing who will be responsible for execution is a key issue for Yonghui.

Wang Shoucheng's resume is highly aligned with the needs of this transformation. Public information shows he was born in 1991, holds a master's degree from Peking University, joined Yonghui in 2017 as a "Rongcai" management trainee, and successively served as CEO business assistant, cluster operations partner, head of human resources for the Fujian/Jiangxi province, and general manager of the Shanghai province. He has done both HR and regional operations.

Especially in the "Donglai Learning Project," he served as head of the reform team, leading the establishment of operational standards, making him one of the most experienced executors of the Fat Donglai-style reform internally. Therefore, his appointment as CEO is itself seen as a clear signal that Yonghui is moving the "Fat Donglai-style reform" from a project-based approach to a normalized, company-wide level.

His first public speech also reflects this orientation. At the press conference, Wang Shoucheng revealed that reformed stores have seen an average traffic increase of about 80%, and after entering a stable period, profitability has exceeded the highest level in the past five years. He also stated that reform has no endpoint, and the company will continue to invest in people, products, and stores to improve store quality.

At the same time, he emphasized that "companies should put employees and customers first," proposing a flywheel vision where improving employee treatment and work experience drives service quality, which in turn supports business performance.

But there is still a gap between ideals and reality.

Financial reports show that as of the end of September, 222 of the 450 stores nationwide had completed reforms, nearly half of the transformation. However, revenue for the first three quarters was 42.434 billion yuan, down 22.21% year-on-year, with a net loss of 710 million yuan, a decrease of 632 million yuan from the same period last year. Overall financial performance remains under pressure.

In other words, visible changes—shelf layout, service details, product structure, and even employee treatment that has been criticized—are almost all being done in the Fat Donglai way, but in the short term, they have not been reflected in the financial statements with equal intensity. There is still a significant gap between "looking like" and "earning money."

In this context, Wang Shoucheng's appointment is seen by the industry as a typical "transformation-oriented hiring." On one hand, he is familiar with Yonghui's internal system and has deeply participated in previous reform pilots, which facilitates accelerating progress on the existing path. On the other hand, he needs to balance the short-term pain of store closures and reforms with medium-to-long-term operational recovery, fulfilling commitments to employees and customers while quickly showing reform results in financial reports. These will constitute the core challenges he faces as the new CEO.

In fact, from Aldi to Sam's Club to Yonghui, these three leadership changes are more like a common move: at a time of slowing growth and intensifying competition, pushing people who "understand operations, supply chains, and the Chinese market" to the forefront, using a personnel adjustment to buy space for business restructuring.

The constraints they face are highly similar:

On one hand, there is the short-term cost pressure from store closures, reforms, and expansion; on the other, there is the long-term project that must be completed. Product structures need to be clearer, supply chains more efficient, employee and member relationships rebuilt, and brands must defend differentiation amid a price war. What the new CEOs can do is not to overturn everything but to recalibrate the system within the existing business and financial constraints.

What truly determines success or failure is who can stabilize a few hard metrics in the next year or two: whether single stores are healthily profitable, whether gross margin and expense ratio structures have improved, and whether employee satisfaction and user stickiness can rise simultaneously.

Changing leaders is just making the determination to change public. For these retail companies, the more critical question is whether they can use a solid round of micro-reforms with visible results to turn this management transition into the starting point for the next stage of business model upgrades.