---
title: "Sam's Club Surges, Costco Jogs, Metro Calls in Reinforcements, Hema Exits: The Membership Store Battle Enters the Second Half"
description: "By 2026, the warehouse membership store sector is increasingly diverging. Sam's Club opens over a dozen new stores a year, surpasses ten million members, and generates more than half its orders online; Costco, nearly seven years in China, has only opened seven stores and remains unhurried; Metro has hired former Sam's Club China president Andrew Miles at a high salary to lead a turnaround; Hema has completely shut down its X Membership stores, pivoting to the 'Hema NB' discount format and achieving profitability. Four companies, four paces, reflecting four different answers on growth, trust, and strategic choice. The membership store battle has entered its second half."
author: "张淑婷"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2026-05-09"
categories: "Retail Formats"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/sam-s-club-surges-costco-jogs-metro-calls-in-reinforcements-hema-exits-t-b6da7e29/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/sam-s-club-surges-costco-jogs-metro-calls-in-reinforcements-hema-exits-t-b6da7e29.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Zr5jZJfQR_eQrwnMTTClog"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E5%B1%B1%E5%A7%86%E7%8B%82%E9%A3%99-costco%E6%85%A2%E8%B7%91-%E9%BA%A6%E5%BE%B7%E9%BE%99%E8%AF%B7%E5%A4%96%E6%8F%B4-%E7%9B%92%E9%A9%AC%E9%80%80%E8%B5%9B-%E4%BC%9A%E5%91%98%E5%BA%97%E5%A4%A7%E6%88%98%E8%BF%9B%E5%85%A5%E4%B8%8B%E5%8D%8A%E5%9C%BA-b6da7e29.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/sam-s-club-surges-costco-jogs-metro-calls-in-reinforcements-hema-exits-t-b6da7e29/"
citation: "张淑婷. “Sam's Club Surges, Costco Jogs, Metro Calls in Reinforcements, Hema Exits: The Membership Store Battle Enters the Second Half.” New Distribution, 2026-05-09. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/sam-s-club-surges-costco-jogs-metro-calls-in-reinforcements-hema-exits-t-b6da7e29/"
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---

# Sam's Club Surges, Costco Jogs, Metro Calls in Reinforcements, Hema Exits: The Membership Store Battle Enters the Second Half

> By 2026, the warehouse membership store sector is increasingly diverging. Sam's Club opens over a dozen new stores a year, surpasses ten million members, and generates more than half its orders online; Costco, nearly seven years in China, has only opened seven stores and remains unhurried; Metro has hired former Sam's Club China president Andrew Miles at a high salary to lead a turnaround; Hema has completely shut down its X Membership stores, pivoting to the 'Hema NB' discount format and achieving profitability. Four companies, four paces, reflecting four different answers on growth, trust, and strategic choice. The membership store battle has entered its second half.

By 2026, the divergence in the warehouse membership store track is becoming increasingly evident.
> Sam's Club opens over a dozen new stores a year, surpasses ten million members, and generates more than half its orders online;
>
> Costco, nearly seven years in China, has only opened seven stores and remains unhurried;
>
> Metro has hired former Sam's Club China president Andrew Miles at a high salary to lead a turnaround;
>
> Hema has completely shut down its X Membership stores, pivoting to the 'Hema NB' discount format and achieving profitability.
Four companies, four paces, behind which lie four different answers on growth, trust, and strategic choice. The membership store battle has entered its second half.

**Sam's Club: The Fastest Runner, but Hidden Risks Are Emerging**

**1. Sam's Club's rapid growth relies on Walmart's supply chain foundation**

By the end of 2025, Sam's Club had opened 63 stores in China, with 10 new stores last year alone, and plans to open another 13 this year.

From Sam's Club's financial disclosures, it's clear that its rapid development today is driven by three main factors:

First: Delivery within half an hour. Online orders account for more than half of total orders. You order at the office, and by the time you get home, the goods are already at your door.

Second: Localization is going smoothly. Swiss rolls, roast chicken, and daifuku are all over Xiaohongshu as 'must-buy red list' items. It's not a copy of the US model; it truly studies what Chinese people like to eat.

Third: High renewal rates. With the first two strategies as a foundation, Sam's Club's卓越会员 (Executive Member) renewal rate has surged to 92%, and membership fees alone bring in billions of yuan annually.

Having studied Walmart, it's not hard to see that the main factor behind Sam's Club's fast pace today is the support of Walmart's global supply chain, which is also why other membership stores want to 'copy the homework' but are discouraged.

This 'close and fast delivery' approach is extremely dependent on Walmart's supply chain foundation—specifically, the 'extreme speed' delivery is essentially the 'capillaries' of that supply chain. If the main artery bleeds, even the densest capillaries will dry up. This is Sam's Club's deepest moat and its most hidden weakness.

**2. 'Close and fast delivery' is a moat, but not eternal**

Sam's Club opens stores in key cities, paired with half-hour delivery, so daily stock-ups rarely require leaving home. It also embeds low-frequency, high-demand services like vision tests into the store layout to increase member visit frequency and dwell time. This is not a coincidence; it's a carefully designed 'convenience trap.'

In contrast, Costco has too few stores; members in first-tier cities have to drive dozens of kilometers to shop.

In comparison, Sam's Club's 'close and fast' approach is indeed a moat that's hard to replicate in the short term.

If Costco gradually opens more stores and adds online delivery, how long can Sam's Club's 'convenience' advantage hold?

My view: Costco will find it hard to match Sam's Club's store density in the short term. But its product selection trust is quietly pulling back a group of members who were turned off by Sam's Club.

Costco's product selection logic is very 'rigid'—globally focused on only about 4,000 SKUs, with extremely uniform procurement standards, and it won't easily lower the bar for localization. Under this mechanism, buyers have already filtered out most mediocre products for members, so you can buy with your eyes closed without stepping on landmines.

Sam's Club's real problem isn't how fast Costco is catching up, but that it's using convenience to attract new members while driving them away with product selection issues.

**3. 'The hidden dangers of running too fast are starting to emerge'**

As stores become denser, family sizes shrink, and consumer tastes change, the costs of Sam's Club's sprint are beginning to show.

(1) Under the trend of smaller families, the cost-effectiveness of large packages is failing.

With the rising proportion of small families, the unsuitability of large packages is increasingly obvious. Take high-frequency repurchase items like Swiss rolls: a box often contains 8-10 pieces, and small families often take several days to finish, or even have to throw some away. Sam's Club has tried introducing smaller packages, but it feels more like a passive patch than a proactive adaptation to changing family sizes from a product logic perspective.

(2) The cycle of hit products is shortening, and Sam's Club's product development can't keep up with young people's changing tastes.

Why is Sam's Club's hit product cycle shorter? Because its hit product logic is still 'large packages, high calories,' but young people's dietary structure has changed.

People used to love Swiss rolls, but now they're controlling sugar. Sam's Club's R&D speed can't keep up with the speed at which young people change their tastes. What's the next hit? There's no clear successor yet. If Sam's Club's product selection and R&D pace continues to lag behind consumer taste changes, a gap in hit products won't just be a 'shorter cycle' issue; it will directly affect membership renewal willingness.

(3) Store densification risks diluting per-store performance.

If two Sam's Club stores are very close, will per-store performance be diluted? Public data still looks good, but in the long run, dilution is almost inevitable.

**4. Product selection, quality control, and trust—the 'hardest hit areas' of complaints**

Sam's Club used to focus on 'strict selection' and 'scarcity' in its product selection. That's why people once trusted it. It's not hard to notice that complaints about Sam's Club's product selection have been increasing recently.

Some say: 'Sam's Club's product selection is a mess now; compared to before, it's really insincere.' Others directly say: 'Now when I buy Sam's Club products, I have to subconsciously check the origin and ingredients, which I never had to do before.'

The decline in Sam's Club's product selection ability in recent years is not accidental. A few years ago, a category would have only 2-3 SKUs, carefully selected; now, to scale up, a category has over 10 SKUs, with a large influx of domestic suppliers. With more suppliers, quality control can't keep up. This isn't a lazy buyer; it's a crack between growth strategy and quality control capability—running too fast, shoelaces loosened.

In July 2025, Sam's Club removed high-repurchase old products like sun cakes and low-sugar egg yolk pastries, replacing them with mass-market brands like Orion, Panpan, and Hsu Fu Chi. Many old members feel their membership fees are no longer worth it.

Around the same time, real product photos on the Sam's Club app were quietly replaced with polished AI-generated images, with key information folded or even blurred. Members feel the trust they paid for in product selection is shrinking.

There have also been successive exposures: cold fresh pork with a slaughter date months earlier, and after scanning the traceability code, the information mysteriously disappeared; a product from the same factory as an organic freeze-dried strawberry was found to have cadmium exceeding standards and over 20 types of pesticide residues beyond the scope; and even a live mouse appeared in a 'extreme speed' mochi box.

Trust is like an 'accumulated account.' An incident deducts a point, and mishandling deducts another. The former 'buy with eyes closed' trust is slowly loosening. People offer suggestions because they still hold hope.

**Costco: The Jogger, Rediscovered**

Costco has been in China for nearly seven years, with only 7 stores (2 in Shanghai, and 1 each in Suzhou, Ningbo, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, and Nanjing). Slow—that's its own insistence.

Costco doesn't rely on frequent discounts to attract customers; it relies on extreme product selection and cost-effectiveness, making people willing to drive far for a visit. Its private label Kirkland is a guarantee of quality, with a global member renewal rate exceeding 90%, and most profits come from membership fees.

But slowness has its costs.

While Sam's Club opens stores aggressively, delivers in half an hour, and Xiaohongshu is full of product recommendations, Costco fans are still driving dozens of kilometers to stock up on a big box of goods.

However, recently, different voices have started to emerge.

Some say: 'I used to go to Sam's Club more, and Costco less, but now I've switched to Costco.' This phenomenon isn't because Costco suddenly got stronger; it's more like a shift in trust.

Sam's Club's original core capabilities—strict product selection, stable quality, and the trust of buying with eyes closed—are being diluted. From complaints on Black Cat exceeding 13,000 (concentrated on food safety and false advertising), to its private label Member's Mark organic soybeans dropping from Grade 1 to Grade 3 without a price change, with customer service admitting 'quality has indeed declined,' to frequent cold chain quality control failures, the 'strict selection' story Sam's Club has told for years is being reassessed by consumers.

Meanwhile, Costco, despite having few stores, slow delivery, and American-style large packages misaligned with the trend of smaller Chinese families, with a renewal rate of only about 62% according to industry information, remains restrained in its product selection adjustments and won't rush to introduce local mass-market brands to scale up.

Sam's Club isn't facing how fast Costco is catching up, but rather its own product downgrades, quality control lapses, and evasive after-sales—Sam's Club itself is pushing users toward Costco, which isn't as 'fast' but currently offers more certainty in product selection.

When consumers actively withdraw money from Sam's Club's trust account, its competitors don't need to steal; they just need to wait in place.

**Metro: Changing a CEO Won't Solve the Gene Problem**

**1. Metro's urgency stems from repeated transformation failures**

Metro entered China in 1996, earlier than both Sam's Club and Costco. But it has always been a wholesale business, and people rarely shopped there except for stocking up.

After being acquired by Wumart in 2019, it began transitioning to family-oriented retail, learning from Pang Dong Lai to renovate stores and develop its own brands. But the results were poor, with a loss of 471 million yuan in 2022.

In April this year, the latest news: Metro directly hired former Sam's Club China president Andrew Miles as executive chairman—this person was the core operator behind Sam's Club's rapid rise in China in recent years, and was 'rehired' just a year after retirement.

Miles's signature move has always been 'less is more'—cutting a bunch of products and focusing on a few big hits. It seems he wants to use this approach to transform Metro into a family-oriented membership store. Many comments in the comment section expressed anticipation, believing Metro will get better and better. But will it really go so smoothly?

**2. The difficulty is far more than just changing a CEO**

Can a parachuted-in president change Metro's deep-rooted wholesale genes in two or three years?

Some consumers have pointed out that Metro's seafood section doesn't offer slaughtering—even the most basic service of domestic supermarkets is lacking. Others say its cold chain is inadequate, with frozen products repeatedly refrozen. Sam's Club already offers eyeglass fitting and hearing tests, while Metro is still far behind.

From consumer feedback, it's not all negative—some praise: 'Metro's vegetable seedlings are really good; we have a vegetable hotpot every weekend, and it's delicious.' These product selections are indeed good.

But more people feel it's 'neither fish nor fowl,' with no compelling reason to go. Ultimately, this transformation is akin to 'gene surgery,' extremely difficult. The decision-making logic for B2B and B2C is completely opposite: B2B focuses on contract amounts, B2C on experience details. Metro's procurement processes, store layouts, and employee performance are all B2B logic. No matter how experienced Miles is, he can't overcome the entire system not cooperating.

**3. Metro learning from Pang Dong Lai: It can learn the surface but not the soul**

Some joke: 'Pang Dong Lai is really impressive; even Metro has to learn from it.'

This is a bit sarcastic, but also quite real—when a local supermarket becomes a template for foreign giants to learn from, it shows the retail industry's direction is indeed changing.

Metro's problem isn't 'who's in charge,' but the need to rebuild its supply chain, cold chain, and store experience from scratch. This 'gene surgery' is too big; relying solely on an external helper, I think it's unlikely to succeed.

**Hema: If You Can't Beat Them, Change the Game**

In 2020, Hema grandly opened its first X Membership store, aiming directly at Sam's Club and Costco. Five years later, all X Membership stores have been closed.

Why all closed?

Because Sam's Club and Costco have spent decades honing their private labels and supply chains, creating high barriers. Hema X Membership store products weren't much different from outside, so consumers had no reason to 'must buy here.'

Burning money couldn't continue, so Hema decisively closed the stores and pivoted to 'Hema NB' discount stores, targeting lower-tier markets. It's said that NB store sales exceeded 10 billion yuan in 2025, and Hema truly started making money for the first time.

Hema's case shows: When you can't deposit into the trust account, the wisest choice isn't to keep betting, but to switch tables.

Strategy is sometimes not about 'what to do,' but 'what not to do.' Admitting you can't win and taking another path requires more courage than stubbornly holding on.

**Supply Chain and Private Labels: The Real Cards in Membership Retail**

Sam's Club's Member's Mark accounts for 30%, a 'strong control' type: global direct sourcing, we set standards, you produce according to standards, and if you don't meet them, we change suppliers. Its 'family foundation' is thick.

Costco's Kirkland accounts for 30% globally, a 'co-progress' type: we develop with suppliers and share risks. Quality is unquestionable, but localization in China is too slow.

Metro's 'brand without fame' type: 'Metro Premium' and '宜客' account for over 40%, with good quality reputation, but no one remembers them.

Hema NB is 'practical': not seeking fame, only quality and low price. It turned discount stores into a profitable business through private labels.

None of the four is absolutely good or bad, but a trend is visible: the future winner will be the one that can weld 'brand mindshare' and 'supply chain efficiency' together.

The future war isn't about who opens stores faster, but whose supply chain is stronger and whose private label understands you better.

**Final Thoughts**

Sam's Club surges, Costco jogs, Metro changes its operator, Hema changes its track.

Four paces, all telling the same truth: In the second half of the membership store game, it's not about who opens faster, but who has deposited more into consumers' 'trust accounts.'

Sam's Club is trading growth for deposits, Costco is accumulating deposits with slowness, Metro wants to borrow to deposit, and Hema has already switched tracks to save. Whose account will be emptied first? Who can survive on interest?

Consumers ultimately choose not who discounts the most, but who makes them feel they won't be taken lightly. They're voting not just with their wallets, but for long-term peace of mind.

In business terms, 'not being taken lightly' means stable product selection, reliable quality control, and after-sales that doesn't shirk responsibility. On all three points, Sam's Club is regressing; Costco hasn't improved much, but by standing still, it becomes the winner.

This marathon has no finish line, only a constantly redefined 'worth it.'


---

## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 张淑婷
- Published: 2026-05-09
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/sam-s-club-surges-costco-jogs-metro-calls-in-reinforcements-hema-exits-t-b6da7e29/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Zr5jZJfQR_eQrwnMTTClog

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