---
title: "Hema's 2025 Revenue Growth Exceeds 40%: What We See"
description: "On New Year's Day 2026, Hema CEO Yan Xiaolei released an all-staff letter revealing that Hema's overall revenue grew over 40% year-on-year in 2025, with Hema Fresh and Chaobaisuan NB serving over 100 million consumers. The letter highlighted strategic adjustments, including entering 40 new cities for Hema Fresh and opening over 200 new Chaobaisuan NB stores, bringing totals to nearly 500 and 400 stores respectively. More importantly, Alibaba's FY2025 annual report showed Hema's GMV exceeded 75 billion yuan with first-time positive adjusted EBITA, projecting FY2026 GMV to surpass 100 billion yuan by March 2026."
author: "零售商业评论"
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published: "2026-01-10"
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# Hema's 2025 Revenue Growth Exceeds 40%: What We See

> On New Year's Day 2026, Hema CEO Yan Xiaolei released an all-staff letter revealing that Hema's overall revenue grew over 40% year-on-year in 2025, with Hema Fresh and Chaobaisuan NB serving over 100 million consumers. The letter highlighted strategic adjustments, including entering 40 new cities for Hema Fresh and opening over 200 new Chaobaisuan NB stores, bringing totals to nearly 500 and 400 stores respectively. More importantly, Alibaba's FY2025 annual report showed Hema's GMV exceeded 75 billion yuan with first-time positive adjusted EBITA, projecting FY2026 GMV to surpass 100 billion yuan by March 2026.

**Source** | Retail Business Review
On New Year's Day 2026, Hema CEO Yan Xiaolei released an all-staff letter, disclosing that Hema's overall revenue grew over 40% year-on-year in 2025, with Hema Fresh and Chaobaisuan NB serving over 100 million consumers.
This letter revealed the phased results of Hema's strategic adjustment. In 2025, Hema Fresh entered 40 new cities, and Chaobaisuan NB opened over 200 new stores. As of now, Hema has nearly 500 Hema Fresh stores and 400 Chaobaisuan NB stores nationwide.
More importantly, Alibaba's FY2025 annual report showed Hema's overall GMV exceeded 75 billion yuan, and it achieved positive adjusted EBITA for the first time in a full year. Based on this, it is estimated that by the end of March 2026, Hema's GMV in FY2026 is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan.
Amid overall pressure in the retail industry, "long-distance runner" Hema, under Yan Xiaolei's leadership, has achieved strategic focus, validated a sustainable profit model, and made phased progress.
**Strategic Focus, Profit Model Validated**
At the end of 2024, Yan Xiaolei drove Hema's most profound strategic adjustment since its inception, clearly concentrating resources on two main business formats: Hema Fresh and Chaobaisuan NB.
Hema Fresh focuses on the mid-to-high-end market, with "quality fresh food and instant delivery" as its core. Stores are mainly located in core business districts, meeting the quality needs of urban middle-class families. Chaobaisuan NB, positioned as a "community discount store," provides convenient shopping experiences and high cost-performance options for nearby community residents. In just over three years, it has surpassed 400 stores, accelerating its layout in the community discount track.
Behind this strategic adjustment is a precise judgment of retail industry trends. Hema had tried various formats but ultimately decided to completely exit the membership store track, concentrating resources on more mature businesses with clearer returns.
The core of strategic focus is resource optimization. By concentrating formats, it can integrate supply chains and product systems, thereby improving operational efficiency.
"Amid accelerating consumption stratification, retail needs precise format positioning to achieve optimal resource allocation. Hema's dual-format strategy stabilizes its main market while maximizing efficiency through resource concentration," said an industry analyst.
In my view, Hema has shifted to a pragmatic development path centered on profitability. Driven by the two core formats of Hema Fresh and Chaobaisuan NB, it penetrates different consumption levels through large stores and community stores. At the same time, supply chain synergy enhances operational efficiency, which is key to achieving sustainable profitability.
**City Expansion, Tapping Incremental Growth in Emerging Markets**
From the retail market layout perspective, **consumption in emerging cities is rising strongly**. Consumers in emerging cities are no longer satisfied with basic functional consumption but are paying more attention to **quality and experience**.
Closely observing these consumption trends, Hema's city expansion strategy changed significantly in 2025. While maintaining density in first-tier cities, Hema aggressively entered emerging markets.
In **first-tier cities**, Hema mainly densified its network, such as adding outlets in potential areas like southwest Beijing, west Shenzhen, and northeast Hangzhou, aiming to increase market coverage density.
Meanwhile, Hema significantly accelerated its expansion into **emerging cities**, entering Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Tangshan, and further into second- and third-tier cities like Luoyang, Nanyang, Puyang, Linyi, and Yibin. This indicates its strategic focus has shifted to tapping the consumption potential of emerging markets.
The consumption power of emerging cities has been validated. On the opening day of Hema's first store in Zhongshan, Guangdong, 105 king crabs were sold; in Dongying, Shandong, the bakery section's single-day sales exceeded 400,000 yuan. During the 2025 National Day holiday, Hema stores in emerging cities like Shijiazhuang, Luoyang, Xuzhou, and Yibin were packed, showing a large unmet demand for quality consumption in these cities.
Currently, Hema's layout in the Yangtze River Delta has extended to county-level markets like Changshu and Tongxiang, and its northern expansion is also significant. Hema's entry also drives consumption upgrades.
"The consumption potential of emerging cities has been underestimated for a long time. With income growth from industrial transfer and the return of young populations, emerging cities will show strong explosive power. Retailers need to tap structural growth opportunities through localized supply chains and precise product adaptation," said an industry insider.
The other major format, Chaobaisuan NB, is also accelerating expansion. In 2025, Chaobaisuan NB clearly sped up, opening more than 20 stores per month to seize market share, with September alone seeing 30 new stores. It has also begun to **penetrate economically developed county-level markets**, such as Kunshan and Cixi, both top-100 counties, filling market gaps.
**Long-term Investment in Supply Chain**
**Product Power Value Emerges**
Hema's competitive advantage is not only in front-end stores but also in its solid back-end supply chain.
In the all-staff letter, Yan Xiaolei mentioned that in the future, Hema will focus on "deepening supply chain resilience, creating ultimate user experience, and stimulating organizational efficiency."
In fact, in 2025, Hema increased investment in the supply chain. In November, Hema launched the "Hehe Symbiosis" partner growth plan, announcing it would support 10 partners with annual sales exceeding 1 billion yuan within three years and help 100 suppliers triple their sales.
Hema's supply chain front-loading and integrated fulfillment system jointly determine its advantages in inventory turnover, loss rate, and fulfillment costs. Improved supply chain efficiency is another key factor in performance growth. Through high-frequency replenishment, small batches, and multiple rounds of operations, Hema compresses the inventory cycle for fresh and high-loss categories to an extremely short range.
Currently, Hema has built 8 supply chain centers, over 300 direct sourcing bases, and 8 logistics transfer warehouses, enabling "same-day arrival" for fruits from remote domestic areas and fresh seafood from abroad.
Hema's innovation in supply chain technology is also noteworthy. For example, on December 25, 2025, Hema's new aquatic live fresh warehouse in Shanghai was put into operation. It is Hema's largest aquatic live holding warehouse, using its self-developed "Water Control Master" system, capable of holding over 70 types of aquatic products.
The strong supply chain foundation allows Hema to "show its skills" in product innovation.
Hema's innovative products revolve around three directions: "fresh, healthy, and self-pleasing." These products not only meet consumers' functional needs but also become **carriers of emotional value**.
**For example, the Strawberry Box Cake** is a model of Hema's product innovation. Since its launch in 2021, this product has undergone four years of iteration, becoming a phenomenal product in the supermarket bakery sector with single-season sales exceeding 100 million yuan. The cake contains 25 whole red strawberry fruits, and the overall sugar content has been reduced by 90%, truly achieving "low sugar without compromising taste."
It is understood that to ensure the high quality of the Strawberry Box Cake, Hema has built a full chain from "fresh fruit planting—central factory—store operations—user feedback." Since 2024, Hema has established its own strawberry base in East China, exclusively supplying first-generation red strawberry seedlings to ensure each strawberry is highly consistent in size, shape, and sweetness.
In the healthy beverage sector, Hema's HPP (High Pressure Processing) juice series has also performed well. This series has maintained double-digit growth for three consecutive years, with private label ratio as high as 90%.
Another example is Hema's "nutrition visualization" strategy, which translates health concepts into actual sales. After labeling nutritional elements on sandwich products, sales in that category grew significantly. Hema also plans to make all cake sweetness "transparent," reducing sweetness to 8-12 degrees, far below the common 20-30 degrees in Europe, America, Japan, and South Korea.
**Small-pack products** are another innovation by Hema to address consumption scenario segmentation. In 2025, Hema launched products like small bread rolls at 3.9 yuan each and small cakes at 7.9-8.9 yuan each, catering to the "eating alone" and "self-pleasing" consumption trends. These products lower consumption thresholds, making "small celebrations" part of daily life.
Under the "clean label" trend, Hema is making "ingredient list reduction" a direction for all categories. For example, Hema's dried fruit comes in two types: one is single-ingredient, using only the fruit itself coated with sugar and dried; the other is juice-soaked, without any preservatives.
Behind these innovative products, there is also a significant shift in Hema's product strategy: reducing products that are new for the sake of being new, and shifting to stable quality, clear pricing, and repeatable purchase certainty. This also marks Hema's transition from pursuing short-term hits to long-term user value management.
We believe that future retail competition is not only about price and efficiency but also about product power and user relationships. Hema has proven its product innovation capability over the past decade and will convert these innovations into a sustainable growth model.
In 2026, the consumer market will continue to iterate rapidly. For the retail industry, only by adhering to a user-centric approach, through strategic innovation, supply chain upgrades, and technology empowerment, can it stand out in market competition. For Hema, the next challenge will be to find a balance between efficiency and innovation, scale and quality, and short-term interests and long-term value.
**[Moving Toward the C-End] The 11th China FMCG Conference**
**Time: March 16-18, 2026**
**Location: Chengdu, China**


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 零售商业评论
- Published: 2026-01-10
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/hema-s-2025-revenue-growth-exceeds-40-what-we-see-1367a08d/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/u6qu-mKysSIjh6LPaB9ZtQ

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