Source | Retail Circle
The century-long evolution of China's retail industry is an epic from street peddling to digital transformation. Especially over the past few decades, from the planned economy's supply and marketing cooperatives to the new era of online-offline integration, many outstanding entrepreneurs have emerged.
Some of them fell from their peaks, some rose from the ashes, some reconstructed business logic with technology, some reshaped brand value through globalization, and some changed competitive dynamics with personal charisma. This article introduces the entrepreneurial journeys, business philosophies, and contributions of these eight entrepreneurs to China's retail industry, showing how they drove industry progress on different tracks.
Zhang Wenzhong: The Godfather of Retail
Zhang Wenzhong, the pioneer of modern chain supermarkets in China, was a top student from a young age. Born in Qingdao in 1962, he excelled academically and was admitted to Nankai University's mathematics department in 1979. After graduation, he was assigned to Daqing Oilfield, a job many envied for its stability. But Zhang was not content with the status quo. In 1985, he returned to Nankai University to pursue a master's in economics. Due to his outstanding performance, he completed all courses a year early and became a researcher at the Development Research Center of the State Council. Later, his mentor recommended him to study systems engineering abroad as a postdoctoral fellow. If Dr. Zhang had continued on this trajectory, we might have known him as a scientist. But then came his first major turning point.
The "second wave of reform and opening up" in 1992 made him realize that "entrepreneurs would be the heroes driving progress in this era." After returning to China in 1993, he founded a computer company with his classmate Wu Jianzhong. They developed a MIS and POS system to improve supermarket management, but faced resistance when promoting it.
The advanced technology and concepts they brought from abroad were not suitable for the backward Chinese market. At that point, Zhang made a bold decision: to open a supermarket himself and use his own system as a test. Perhaps many miracles are not deliberately created but happen by chance. Thus, in 1994, the first supermarket in China to use an internet system, Wumart, opened on Cuiwei Road in Beijing's bustling Haidian District. No one expected that this Wumart would pioneer China's local chain supermarket industry.
Compared to traditional stores relying on manual calculation and bookkeeping, Zhang's Wumart operated at incredible speed with the help of computers and the internet. Within just one year, Wumart's sales were astonishing.
Zhang seized the momentum and developed multiple chain supermarkets across the country, with sales continuing to grow. In November 2003, Zhang listed Wumart on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In the company's tenth year, Zhang entered the Forbes mainland rich list with personal assets of $125 million, earning the title "Godfather of Chinese Retail."
Zhang's rise to his first peak came to an abrupt halt in November 2006. Although his partner Wu Jianzhong stepped up, Wumart without Zhang lost its soul. Zhang faced his second turning point—his darkest hour.
By February 6, 2013, when Zhang was released from prison, just over six years had passed—a golden period for China's retail industry, from enlightenment to leapfrog development. Not only were foreign companies like Carrefour and Walmart expanding offline stores, but domestic chains were also growing rapidly. E-commerce platforms like JD.com and Tmall were building their foundations. Most believed Zhang's glorious era was over. But the strong rise from where they fall.
Zhang made business digitalization his new goal for re-entrepreneurship. In 2014, he led the acquisition of B&Q China, brought in major shareholders like IDG Capital, Tencent, and Hengan International, and established the e-commerce platform Dmall.
In 2018, Zhang seized the opportunity to take over 160 Beijing Linjia convenience stores that had suffered a capital chain rupture. From 2020 to 2023, over three years, Wumart fully acquired Metro China. Currently, Dmall covers 26 provinces and cities, serving over 2,000 shopping malls.
On May 20, 2025, at the main forum of the 4th Shanghai Innovation and Entrepreneurship Youth 50 Forum, Zhang Wenzhong, founder of Wumart Group and Dmall, delivered a keynote speech via video, saying: "Today, retail encounters GPT technology. What opportunities do large models and generative AI bring? This is something everyone needs to seriously consider." This 63-year-old entrepreneur is still at the forefront of retail, practicing his belief: "The most important thing in entrepreneurship is to choose an industry you love and strive for it for life."
Wang Tian: Founder of the Department Store + Supermarket Model
Born in 1968 in Xiangxiang, Hunan, Wang Tian seemed to have business in his genes. In 1988, as a student majoring in accounting at Xiangtan Commercial School, he started with a thermos flask liner. Within two years, he almost monopolized the thermos flask liner business in Xiangtan's universities and colleges, beginning his commercial journey. In August 1989, after graduation, Wang was assigned to Xiangtan Nanbei Te Food Company. Three years later, due to his outstanding performance, he was appointed as business section chief. Under his efforts, joint venture brands like Arawana oil and Nestlé coffee were introduced to the company, and his reputation grew. In 1995, Wang and his wife Zhang Haixia, who also worked at Nanbei Te, voluntarily took early retirement to start their own business. They named their company Xiangtan Bubugao Food Company, borrowed 50,000 yuan, and started a food wholesale business.
Starting with the general distribution rights for Uni-President instant noodles in Xiangtan, Wang's business accelerated.
Smart and hardworking, he transformed from a sedentary merchant to an itinerant one. He personally led his sales team on tricycles, traversing every street and alley in Xiangtan, and even venturing beyond the county. Within half a year, Wang established a distribution network of about 800 terminals, and Bubugao's reputation grew.
Next, Wang identified several prime locations in Xiangtan and opened hypermarkets, all of which were surprisingly successful. With growing strength, Bubugao began to expand beyond Xiangtan, launching a land grab in Hunan, entering Zhuzhou, Liling, Changde, Yueyang, and other surrounding cities.
Due to limited resources, Wang chose a strategy of "rural areas surrounding cities." He first sought development in small and medium-sized cities, county-level markets, and communities, then advanced to big cities when the time was ripe.
The "retreat of state-owned enterprises and advance of private enterprises" provided a perfect expansion opportunity for the prepared Bubugao. A large number of comatose commercial resources in small and medium-sized cities, vast idle business premises, and many experienced employees were seen as hot potatoes by state-owned enterprises but became valuable resources for Wang. The collapse of the state-owned commercial system and the decline of marketplaces left market gaps that created precious development opportunities for Wang's Bubugao.
Wang also noticed the rigid operations of traditional state-owned department stores. Products sold at low prices in supermarkets could not fully meet consumer needs; there were still ample business opportunities in clothing, shoes, cosmetics, and other goods. So Wang boldly combined department stores and hypermarkets into a business format, and Bubugao embarked on a path of diversified formats. On June 19, 2007, Bubugao Commercial Chain Co., Ltd. was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, creating one billionaire and 47 millionaires.
By December 2007, Bubugao had established 47 holding subsidiaries in Hunan and Jiangxi provinces, with 87 stores. In the A-share commercial chain sector, Bubugao was already a medium-sized enterprise.
By 2019, Bubugao reached its highest revenue of 19.7 billion yuan, with business spanning supermarkets, home appliances, commercial real estate, finance, e-commerce, and even prepared dishes.
All the glory reversed in 2021, when Bubugao recorded its first loss, with an annual loss of 184 million yuan. At that time, Bubugao still had 386 stores of various formats (343 supermarket stores and 43 department stores).
In 2022, losses widened again, with net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company expected to be between -1.3 billion and -1.95 billion yuan. By the end of September 2022, Bubugao Group's current liabilities reached 16 billion yuan.
On March 16, 2023, Bubugao announced that the agreement transfer procedures with Xiangtan Industry Investment had been completed. After the equity transaction, Xiangtan Industry Investment held 86,390,395 shares, accounting for 10% of the total share capital, becoming the controlling shareholder. The actual controller became the Xiangtan State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. On July 17, 2023, the Xiangtan Intermediate People's Court initiated pre-reorganization for Bubugao. Starting in April 2024, Bubugao introduced multiple industrial and financial investors, including 4 industrial investors and 13 financial investors.
By September 28 of that year, the Xiangtan Intermediate People's Court formally confirmed the completion of the reorganization plan for Bubugao and its 14 subsidiaries, ending the related reorganization procedures. At the same time, Bubugao successfully removed the special treatment (ST) designation.
In April 2024, Bubugao became the first listed company to undergo a "Pangdonglai-style" transformation personally led by Yu Donglai. The Meixihu store completed its adjustment in April, and in May, total sales reached 41.28 million yuan with 361,000 customer visits. On May 22, the Jiuhua store resumed operations, with first-day sales of 1.64 million yuan, a 15-fold increase.
At the same time, Bubugao accelerated store closures. By December 2024, only 27 supermarket stores remained. As Deng Jing, president of Bubugao and general manager of its supermarket division, said: "Learning from Pangdonglai's adjustments taught us that letting go is also a form of love."
As Brother Donglai said, "Don't do things beyond your capabilities. If you can't do it well, leave the market to those who can. That is also a kind of beauty." Bubugao may be one of the few companies that have truly learned the essence of Pangdonglai.
According to Bubugao Supermarket's 2024 performance announcement, Bubugao achieved annual revenue of 3.441 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.14%; net profit of 1.212 billion yuan, up 164.16% year-on-year. Non-GAAP net profit was -978 million yuan, narrowing losses by 40.07% year-on-year. On March 10, 2025, Bubugao Supermarket officially announced that its private label brand BL would go on sale on March 12. The BL brand adheres to the philosophy of "Better life, Better love," committed to providing consumers with high-quality, affordable daily necessities. By directly cooperating with origins and factories, the BL brand ensures product quality at the source while achieving price transparency and affordability. The story of Bubugao and Wang Tian continues. After the storms, we hope Bubugao will usher in new vitality.
Huang Guangyu: The Disruptor of China's Home Appliance Retail
Born in 1969 in Fenghu Village, Tongyu Town, Chaoyang County, Shantou, Guangdong, Huang Guangyu's childhood memories were dominated by picking garbage and collecting scraps. At 16, he dropped out of junior high school and followed his older brother Huang Junqin, with dreams of the future and a desire to change their fate, heading north to Inner Mongolia to embark on a business journey full of unknowns and challenges.
In 1986, 17-year-old Huang Guangyu and his brother were stranded in a Beijing waiting room due to tight Spring Festival train tickets. During that time, with the innate business acumen of Chaoshan people, he spotted the opportunity in China, then in the throes of reform and opening up, where various advanced electrical appliances were springing up like mushrooms in ordinary households.
They used the 4,000 yuan saved in Inner Mongolia and borrowed another 30,000 yuan to rent a 100-square-meter store at 420 Zhushikou East Street, Qianmen, Beijing, converting the former Guomei clothing store to sell electrical appliances. On January 1, 1987, the Guomei Electrical Appliance store sign was officially hung, and a commercial legend began.
At that time, electrical appliance supply was relatively scarce, and many merchants raised prices to seek high profits. Huang, however, went against the grain, insisting on retail and a strategy of small profits but quick turnover. This breakthrough move won Guomei a large customer base and quickly established a foothold in the market.
In 1991, Huang once again demonstrated his innovative thinking by using the middle-page ad in Beijing Evening News to promote the slogan "Buy appliances, go to Guomei." This unconventional move significantly boosted Guomei's visibility, and business became even more booming.
In 1992, the Guomei store on Zhushikou had grown into a large electrical appliance mall. He began preliminary chain operations in Beijing, unifying his stores under the name Guomei Electrical Appliances, forming the prototype of a chain model.
By 1993, Guomei had developed five or six chain stores. He unified all stores under one brand, laying a solid foundation for Guomei's future takeoff.
With almost obsessive diligence, working 18 hours a day, Guomei surpassed 100 stores by 1999, quickly entering more than 20 large and medium-sized cities, completing its layout in China's first-tier markets. While Guomei was growing rapidly, in 1996, Huang founded Guomei Real Estate, entering the real estate industry.
In 2000, he entered the capital market, injecting funds into Hong Kong-listed Jinghua Automation through Zhan Peizhong, becoming the second-largest shareholder. In 2002, he spent HK$135 million to acquire 85.6% of Jinghua Automation, becoming the largest shareholder, and through a series of capital operations, renamed it China Pengrun. In 2004, after a share restructuring, Huang took Guomei public through a backdoor listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
From 2004 to 2008, Huang successively acquired Harbin Black Swan, Shenzhen Yihaojia, etc., gradually becoming the overlord of China's electrical appliance retail. He topped the Hurun Rich List in 2004, 2005, and 2008, becoming a legend in Chinese business, a rags-to-riches fairy tale. Forty days after topping the rich list in 2008, he was detained on suspicion of economic crimes. He was formally released on February 16, 2021.
After his release, Huang wanted to revive Guomei, but the logic of electrical appliance retail had changed dramatically. Although he launched the entertainment social e-commerce platform Zhenkuai Le, trying to carve out a new space in e-commerce, the strategy of expanding into all categories caused Guomei to lose its main business advantage, and it successively failed in mobile e-commerce, live-streaming e-commerce, and social e-commerce.
Since then, Guomei has faced severe challenges. By early 2023, Huang concluded that Guomei was beyond saving and began selling shares, raising about 2 billion yuan in cash, while Guomei's cash on hand was only 60 million yuan. He had effectively abandoned Guomei, transferring all rights to his sister Huang Xiuhong.
Despite setbacks, Huang never gave up. Starting from late 2023, several Guomei supermarkets quietly opened in Guangzhou. The stores are about 200 square meters, similar to Japanese convenience stores. Later, he made a high-profile appearance at Changsha Leerle Supermarket, signing a "Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement," attempting to attract traffic and franchisees for Guomei supermarkets.
But Guomei's credibility at this point meant manufacturers dared not offer credit terms; they demanded cash on delivery, which was unbearable for Guomei's fragile capital chain, and the supermarket project became unsustainable. Besides supermarkets, Huang secretly registered companies in new energy vehicles, blockchain, the metaverse, and live-streaming e-commerce.
Each time news of a new company emerged, Guomei's stock price would rise, but eventually, nothing materialized, and the stock price fell back.
The 2024 annual report showed Guomei's annual loss of 11.6 billion yuan, the eighth consecutive year without turning a profit, with net assets falling to -20.6 billion yuan, leaving only 163 stores, a decrease of over 4,000 from the peak of 4,195 in 2021. Huang Guangyu is indeed a business tycoon of his generation. He rose from a poor boy to a business giant, fell to the bottom at his peak, and now struggles to survive in adversity. Whether he can make a comeback and write another business legend remains to be seen.
Huang Mingduan: The King of the Hypermarket Era
Huang Mingduan seems a tragic figure in China's retail development history, but his diligence, inspirational story, and achievements are etched in the monument of Chinese retail.
Born in 1955 in a simple fishing village in Xigang Township, Tainan, his early years were unusual. He was not a diligent student, often hanging around gambling dens and even involved in fights, leaving scars on his body to this day. The turning point came in 1997 when Huang rented a tin shed and officially began his entrepreneurial journey with RT-Mart.
A middle-aged man with gold-rimmed glasses and a Hong Kong accent, he traveled across the country to open stores. For each store, he personally lived at the construction site for three months, arranging shelves more neatly than a library and keeping the fresh food area clean enough to sleep on. With meticulousness, he built his empire.
Huang's uniqueness lay in absorbing the advanced experience of international retail giants like Walmart while boldly innovating according to Chinese market characteristics.
In product structure, RT-Mart strengthened the proportion of fresh food and daily necessities. In site selection, it avoided core business districts in first-tier cities, focusing on sub-central areas. In pricing, it adopted everyday low prices rather than periodic promotions.
These localization measures quickly opened the market for RT-Mart, with average annual sales per store remaining above 300 million yuan for a long time, far exceeding the industry average. It earned the title "King of Land Warfare" and set a miracle of never closing a single store in 19 years of entering the Chinese mainland market.
In 2011, RT-Mart's parent company Sun Art Retail was listed in Hong Kong, with a market value exceeding HK$100 billion at one point and over 200 stores, leaving Carrefour and Walmart behind. This was Huang's brightest moment to date.
But times change quietly. In 2017, Ma Yun brought Zhang Yong to the door, buying 36% of RT-Mart for HK$22.4 billion. At the signing ceremony, Huang joked, "We finally found a ticket to the digital age." But he didn't expect that the price of this ticket would be the complete dismantling of the retail empire he had built.
After Alibaba took over, RT-Mart underwent digital transformation. Huang led his team to learn live-streaming, develop apps, connect shelves to Taoxianda, and even turn stock clerks into delivery riders.
By 2024, although RT-Mart's online orders had grown by 40%, its market value had fallen from a peak of HK$100 billion to less than HK$20 billion, completely losing to the changes of the times. Before the Spring Festival of 2025, Huang said at a senior management meeting: "A hypermarket should not be an internet experiment field, but a vegetable basket for the people."
But despite saying that, he had to accept reality. A month later, Alibaba sold RT-Mart to DCP Capital for HK$13.1 billion, losing nearly HK$40 billion in eight years.
On February 28, 2025, Huang Mingduan, at the age of 70, officially stepped down from RT-Mart's historical stage. That day, Huang deliberately wore the old suit from his 1997 startup days and carefully placed his work badge in an iron box with the RT-Mart logo.
At the handover ceremony, he told his successor Hua Yuneng: "The third shelf in the cold storage is prone to frost; remember to defrost twice a week." Even details not recorded by the smart system were remembered clearly by him. Today, although RT-Mart has changed owners, the three-hour renovation rule and the eight-tooth smile service standard left by Huang are still upheld. The neatness and warmth of the shelves are what people truly need.
After stepping down, Huang chose to return to his hometown and carefully organized his work notes from his entrepreneurial days. He wrote a meaningful sentence in his diary: "Everything that loses to the times will return in another form." He spent 28 years making a store the industry's top, but lost in the tide of the times, not because he wasn't diligent enough, but because the internet completely changed the rules of the retail industry.
Zhuang Chenchao: The Technology-Driven Retail Innovator
Compared to the other industry giants in this article, Zhuang Chenchao is the least known, but this "other people's child" has left a significant mark on China's retail history.
Born in Shanghai in 1976 to ordinary working-class parents, Zhuang was sensitive to numbers from a young age, with a deck of cards as his favorite toy. At five, he played poker with the neighborhood adults and always won lots of candy. Because his parents were busy, Zhuang was placed in the Shanghai Children's Palace from elementary school. He seemed naturally interested in the computers there. Most children treated computers as toys and lost interest quickly, but Zhuang followed the network administrator to learn programming every day, spending one or two hours in the computer room after class. By the time he finished elementary school, he could write dozens of small programs in BASIC. In middle and high school, his mathematical talent shone, winning first prizes in the Hua Luogeng Cup Mathematics Competition every year and being admitted to Peking University's Electronic Engineering Department at 18. This was just the beginning of his meteoric rise.
In 1997, when the domestic internet was still in its infancy, Zhuang, then a college student, noticed Yahoo. He decided to imitate the then-dominant Yahoo and create a Chinese-language search engine.
At just 21, Zhuang used the Chinese version of Silicon Valley's Verity website to create the Chinese search engine Sogou (SouSuoKe), two years earlier than Li Yanhong's Baidu, and became a leader in the Chinese search engine field alongside Zhang Chaoyang's Sohu. But soon after, Zhuang sold the search engine and cashed out a large sum.
Next, unable to stay idle, Zhuang teamed up with Dai Furui, former head of ChinaByte's sports section, for his second venture, founding Shawai Sports, adopting a new model of information plus images. In December 1999, Shawai Sports went online and became the largest sports forum in China within half a year.
At that time, Li Ka-shing's second son, Richard Li, came to discuss cooperation with Shawai. While Dai and other executives hesitated, Zhuang immediately decided: "Sell! With money, we can do anything." Just as the $15 million landed safely, the internet bubble swept the globe.
While Ma Yun was brainwashing the 18 founders at Lakeside Garden, Li Yanhong was rushing on Wall Street to find financing for Baidu, and Ma Huateng almost sold OICQ, Zhuang and his partners were enjoying themselves in the United States with their $15 million.
After three or four years abroad, Zhuang returned to China at the invitation of former partners and started his third venture. In 2005, Qunar.com, co-founded by Zhuang and Dai Furui, was officially established.
Taking advantage of the opportunity when Ctrip's Liang Jianzhang went abroad for further study, believing his unicorn position was unshakable, and Ctrip's progress slowed, Zhuang used three innovations—pioneering visa search channels, international flight search services, and travel management software—to win widespread attention for Qunar. Zhuang seized the momentum and continuously improved services like vacation guides, overseas hotel bookings, and flight bookings.
In 2010, Qunar successfully built the largest Chinese hotel review system at the time, with user reviews exceeding 1 million, and announced its transformation from a pure travel search engine to an online travel media. In December 2011, Qunar's monthly visits reached 74.6 million, ranking first among travel websites, pushing Ctrip to second place.
Ctrip founder Liang Jianzhang was no ordinary person. This Shanghai native, whose IQ and EQ could rival Zhuang's, first acquired several travel companies, then cooperated with Tongcheng and Tuniu, and found investors like Tencent and Baidu. Under Liang's operations, Ctrip began to rebound. Meanwhile, Li Yanhong, who had been watching Qunar, spent heavily to gradually buy 61% of Qunar's shares. While the young and successful Zhuang was counting his money, he realized his stake had shrunk to just 7%.
In 2013, Qunar was listed on NASDAQ with a market value exceeding $5 billion. At that point, Zhuang realized he was just a senior professional manager at Qunar. In 2015, after a struggling Ctrip and Qunar merged, Zhuang resigned three months later. Although his personal wealth exceeded $200 million after the listing, Zhuang's third venture tasted failure amid success.
Having achieved financial freedom before 40, Zhuang had plenty of money and was never idle. This time, he targeted convenience stores. In Zhuang's view, everything in life is a probability problem. The way to succeed is simple: calculate the probabilities and choose the path with the highest chance of success.
He said: "Japan has 120 million people and 50,000 convenience stores; the US has 320 million and 150,000; China has 1.4 billion but only 20,000 convenience stores at the time. The market has great potential." In 2017, Zhuang's convenience store chain Bianlifeng opened in Beijing. He believed that using AI algorithms to transform the trillion-yuan retail industry would trigger an exciting revolution.
Bianlifeng used AI-powered smart cabinets to cover office buildings, communities, schools, and other scenarios. Users scan a code to open the cabinet, and items are automatically charged, providing a grab-and-go, frictionless shopping experience.
At the same time, relying on big data analysis, Bianlifeng could accurately predict product demand at each location, controlling restocking frequency to once every two hours, with product turnover three times that of traditional convenience stores.
By 2022, Bianlifeng had completed its layout in 50 cities nationwide, deploying over 100,000 smart cabinets, with daily orders exceeding 2 million. Zhuang's innovation lay in bringing retail scenarios infinitely closer to consumers.
Zhuang's contribution to retail was redefining the concept of convenience. Through technology, Bianlifeng expanded the coverage radius of a single store from the traditional 500 meters to 3 kilometers, while reducing labor costs by 60%.
Its self-developed intelligent supply chain system achieved 98% inventory accuracy and 95% order fulfillment rates. Zhuang proved that technology is the core driver of retail efficiency, and his practice provided a replicable model for the digital transformation of the retail industry.
In Bianlifeng's operations, Zhuang heavily used algorithms to replace human labor. He firmly believed that algorithms could deconstruct all business chaos and reconstruct order with algorithms. In this new order, human roles like store managers and clerks were merely carbon-based robots existing because machines couldn't yet do certain things; they only needed to obey algorithm-issued commands.
However, this management model entirely dependent on algorithms brought many problems. Staff were constantly monitored by the system and had to complete various tedious tasks. Customers also had their behavioral data collected during shopping, greatly diminishing the experience. Under algorithms, Bianlifeng's experience was the opposite of the late-night diner, human touch, and convenience of traditional convenience stores.
Business itself is not a data competition. A commercial company should be an organization where people with various skills cooperate under the guidance of rules. Bianlifeng's culture of judging everything by mathematical performance ultimately led to internal division and employee disengagement.
Retail has always been about human interaction and warmth. Zhuang used advanced concepts and technology to greatly improve operational efficiency, but he, who never truly loved retail, overlooked that the public's need for convenience stores is not cold algorithms but warm service.
Zhuang's fourth venture did not succeed, but the digital operations he advocated and practiced provided an accelerator for the development of the retail business.
Hou Yi: Creator of Fresh Food New Retail
In the recent development of the retail industry, the fleeting brilliance of new retail, though short-lived, played a connecting role for the industry. Hou Yi is a highly pioneering, innovative, and forward-looking retail leader.
With an internet gene, he is adept at breaking conventions and exploring new paths, earning the label of "rule-breaker" in the industry. This also brought exclusion and criticism from many traditional peers, making him a lone warrior in retail for a time. But this did not affect his determination to continue innovating and reforming. Undeniably, he deserves a place in the history of modern retail development.
In 1964, Hou Yi was born in Changning District, Shanghai, a native Shanghainese. He is the same age as Ma Yun and ten years older than Liu Qiangdong. When Hou was 10, his parents, as part of the first batch of intellectuals supporting the petrochemical industry in Shanghai, went to work at Jinshan Petrochemical. After graduating from university, Hou returned to the Shanghai Petrochemical Polyester Plant, where his first job was as a software engineer.
In 1982, at 18, Hou left the stable job at Shanghai Petrochemical and chose to start his own business, becoming a "daoye" (a trader). He rented a counter at Shanghai Maoming Central Plaza to sell clothes, air conditioners, and other products. Later, he also opened the first real estate agency and the first self-service hot pot restaurant in Jinshan District, Shanghai. Through over a decade of grassroots experience in stall-based operations, he built a solid foundation in business practice.
In 1999, at 35, Hou joined Kedi Convenience Store under Bright Dairy, helping upgrade its logistics information management system. With practical experience and technical expertise, he rose to supply chain general manager at Kedi, a position he held for 10 years, witnessing Kedi's expansion from dozens to 2,000 stores.
When he joined a top e-commerce company, Hou was already 45. His benefactor was Qiu Yuanchang, a former superior at Kedi and an investor in JD.com who had joined Today Capital. Hou served as JD.com's chief logistics planner and president of the O2O business unit, and was also responsible for the highly anticipated Asia No.1 e-commerce logistics center project.
During his tenure as O2O department president, Hou developed initial ideas for new retail. He found that pure offline retail struggled to solve inventory and experience issues, and an integrated model combining internet and offline retail was the optimal solution.
In the second half of 2014, Hou proposed a self-operated store model, but his ideas were not valued at JD.com, prompting him to consider leaving. At that point, his second benefactor appeared: Zhang Yong, then CEO of Alibaba.
The two, sharing similar visions for new retail, hit it off immediately. In 2015, at 51, Hou decided to leave JD.com and start anew. That same year, he founded Hema Fresh in Shanghai. Explaining the name, Hou said: "Alibaba likes to name companies after animals. Hema is a homophone for 'hippo,' symbolizing a big mouth that eats everything. We call it 'Fresh' instead of 'fresh food' because in Shanghai, men do the cooking, and 'fresh' is a homophone for 'mister,' making it easier to promote."
Hema's initial four principles were: 1. Online revenue greater than offline; 2. Online orders exceeding 5,000 per day; 3. 30-minute delivery within a 3-kilometer radius; 4. Online and offline as one, meeting consumption needs in different scenarios. The 30-minute delivery was the core of Hema's business. Hou also pioneered the composite format of fresh supermarket + dining, where consumers could select seafood in-store and have it cooked on-site, greatly enhancing the shopping experience.
In January 2016, Hema's first store opened in Jinqiao, Shanghai. Two months later, Hema received $150 million in investment from Alibaba.
That year, Hema's total turnover reached 250 million yuan. At that year's Yunqi Conference, the new concepts he discussed quickly gained industry popularity, and new retail was born. Ma Yun believed that the key to seizing new retail was the integration of online, offline, and logistics.
The impressive start rapidly inflated Hou's ambitions. In 2017, Hema expanded to 18 stores. In 2018, Hema partnered with RT-Mart to launch Hema Xiaoma, targeting lower-tier cities and counties.
The China Chain Store & Franchise Association released the "2018 China Top 100 Fast-Moving Consumer Goods" list, where Hema, only three years old, ranked 18th with annual sales of 14 billion yuan, with sales growth of 300% and store growth of 396.7%. Hou reposted the news, writing: "Give me ten years, a dream of one trillion, to fulfill the dream of Chinese retail people."
But Hema's operations were not smooth sailing. In early 2019, at an internal Alibaba meeting, Hou received the "rotten strawberry" award for the group's worst performance. At the same time, Hema maintained astonishing expansion and cash-burning speed, with single-store investments exceeding tens of millions and a KPI of 200 new stores per year.
That year, Hema's "running at full speed" model was paused, and it faced its first store closure since its founding. That year also saw a wavering Hou embark on a journey of ever-changing formats. In October 2020, Hema opened its first X Membership Store in Shanghai, and the community group buying business Hema Youxuan also opened its doors.
In May 2021, Hema launched Hema Linli, which Hou considered the most important strategy for the next 10 years. Unfortunately, within less than a year, Hema Linli withdrew from cities like Beijing, Xi'an, Chengdu, and Wuhan. Industry insiders joked that Hema had tried every retail format.
It wasn't until November 2022 that Hou publicly stated: "Starting in 2023, Hema's discount brand Hema Outlets will be the brand's most important strategic project, bar none. The competition with Sam's Club and the discount transformation is a life-and-death battle. If we don't win, there's no future." After seven years of wavering, Hema seemed to have found a definite direction, but time was not on Hou's side.
On March 18, 2024, Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu announced that Hou Yi would step down as Hema's CEO, ending his nine years of ups and downs in the new retail industry. Hou was exactly 60 years old. His successor was Hema's CFO Yan Xiaolei.
On March 27, 2024, Hou Yi's last day at Hema, he took a photo in his office as a memento. Hou's departure marked the end of the new retail era.
But this veteran of new retail has not accepted his fate. From the affordable seafood restaurant "Jinxiao Yike" focusing on dinner and late-night snacks, to the pet food new retail brand Pet&Fresh, Hou's exploration continues. I believe a new benefactor is waiting for him not far away.
Ye Guofu: The Global Retail Pioneer
In the business world, opportunities often hide in the unknown and challenges. Courage is the cornerstone of seizing opportunities and exploring new fields. A legendary figure who once boldly offered an annual salary of 100 million yuan to invite Dong Mingzhu to be chairman, rising from a poor boy to a retail tycoon, is Ye Guofu.
Ye Guofu was born in 1977 in a poor rural family in Shiyan, Hubei. He was the youngest of seven siblings, often going hungry. His main tasks as a child were herding cattle and chopping wood.
After elementary school, his family couldn't afford his education, so he attended a technical secondary school, hoping to learn skills and find a job early. But he couldn't even finish that because he couldn't pay the tuition and was forced to drop out. Unwilling to stay in the countryside, in 1997, at 21, he scraped together some money and took a train to Foshan.
Foshan was a big city at the time. Without education or skills, he could only work as a production line worker in a steel pipe factory, doing mechanical work daily. Although he could barely support himself, Ye was determined to change his poverty. He proactively applied for a transfer to sales.
He hit the streets, found customers, and was even good at drinking and socializing. Through hard work and sharp observation, he became the factory's top salesperson, earning 120,000 yuan in a year—a considerable sum in the late 1990s. Restless at heart, Ye began planning to start his own business with the money.
His first venture was a ceramic fittings business in Fujian, but due to lack of experience, it failed quickly, losing 400,000-500,000 yuan. This was a heavy blow. Without capital, he returned to Foshan to continue in sales, slowly making back the losses. In 2001, Ye married his wife Yang Yun, who was then in cosmetics sales.
Ye thought, "I know sales, and my wife knows the cosmetics industry. Why not open a cosmetics store?" In early 2002, a small shop with an investment of only 100,000 yuan opened. His wife handled communication with cosmetics factories for purchasing, while Ye managed store sales, adopting a model of selling cosmetics and applying makeup for customers. This was a first in Foshan at the time. Within less than a year, they opened four branches and earned over 400,000 yuan.
Ye felt the cosmetics business was profitable but lacked explosive potential. In 2004, while chatting with friends, he first learned about the 10-yuan store model. He immediately went to investigate and found that the products in such stores were not only cheap but also novel. After returning, he converted all four cosmetics stores into 10-yuan stores selling various trinkets. Thus, his first accessories company, Aiyaya, was born.
Aiyaya's accessories were fashionable and affordable, especially popular among young people. After business took off, Ye began opening branches nationwide. By 2011, the number of stores reached 3,000, with total business volume of 560 million yuan. Ye became a prominent figure in the industry through Aiyaya.
But good times didn't last. The rise of e-commerce brought an unprecedented crisis to Aiyaya. Ye's offline store business suffered greatly, and many stores had to close.
In 2013, while shopping in Japan, Ye discovered a boutique store called Daiso, which sold mostly daily necessities at prices equivalent to about 10 yuan in China. This sales model was similar to his Aiyaya but also different. That year, he co-founded MINISO with Japanese designer Miyake Junya, and the first store opened as a pilot in Guangzhou.
With its novel model, low prices, and celebrity endorsements, MINISO became an instant hit in China.
In 2015, MINISO began upgrading, emphasizing Japanese design. Store expansion accelerated, reaching 100 stores. Ye was not only good at business but also at marketing.
In 2016, when Dong Mingzhu stepped down as chairman of Gree Group, it sparked considerable discussion in the business world. Ye directly published a recruitment ad in the newspaper, loudly calling on Dong Mingzhu, offering an annual salary of 100 million yuan to be MINISO's chairman. This move instantly put Ye and MINISO on the hot search, gaining massive attention and further boosting MINISO's visibility.
By 2021, in five years, MINISO had expanded to 100 countries globally, with over 5,000 stores, becoming the first Chinese retail company to go global on such a scale.
By then, MINISO was no longer seen as a small store selling cheap daily necessities but as a global IP collaboration store leading interest-based consumption. It collaborated with over 150 well-known IPs worldwide, including Harry Potter, Disney, Sanrio, Chiikawa, and Loopy, launching over 10,000 IP products annually, with cumulative sales of over 800 million IP products. As of December 31, 2024, MINISO Group had 7,780 stores globally, including 4,386 in China and 3,118 overseas. In 2024, overseas business revenue reached 6.68 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42%, contributing nearly 40% of MINISO's revenue.
Even more impressive was in September 2024, when MINISO acquired 29.4% of Yonghui Superstores, a former Chinese listed company with a market value of over 100 billion yuan, for 6.27 billion yuan through a deal with JD.com and a subsidiary of Jardine Matheson, becoming the largest shareholder of Yonghui.
Yonghui Superstores, however, was struggling in a quagmire of losses. From 2021 to 2024, losses amounted to 9.5 billion yuan, with no signs of bottoming out. Meanwhile, in the first quarter of 2025, MINISO's domestic stores decreased by 111, and same-store growth in the quarterly report was unsatisfactory, with its Hong Kong market value evaporating by 8.5 billion yuan in one day. Ye faces the phenomenal challenges of both MINISO and Yonghui, which are trapped in the scale trap.
In 2024, the most resounding statement in retail came from Ye Guofu: "Without courage, how can there be luck!" Now, Ye must protect MINISO's foundation, promote TOP TOY's star-making, and take on Yonghui to reform traditional retail.
Fighting on three fronts, none of which is easy. I hope the courageous Ye Guofu has good luck, and that his snake-swallowing-elephant feat will write a new chapter in China's retail history.
Yu Donglai: The Pioneer of New Business Civilization
In recent years, Pangdonglai, a model of retail excellence, has made Xuchang a holy land for almost all enterprises, with Yu Donglai as the deity they worship. The narrative of Pangdonglai's commercial miracle is widely known, but hidden behind its successful operations is Yu Donglai's shining humanity. The great love he demonstrates may change the values of businessmen who have for decades seen money as the only measure, and may allow more enterprises of truth, goodness, and beauty to emerge in our society.
In September 1966, Yu Donglai was born into a poor farming family in Xuchang, Henan Province. He was never a well-behaved child, often mischievous and frequently scolded or beaten.
Rebellious from a young age, he had constant conflicts with his parents. By the time he was in the first year of junior high, his rebellion intensified. After a major quarrel with his family, he dropped out and ran away from home, having received less than seven years of basic education.
From then on, the underage Yu Donglai drifted in society. To survive, he sold peanuts, sold popsicles, and worked as a temporary worker, with the sole goal of not starving. At 18, his luck seemed to turn when he became a worker at a rubber factory. But fate seemed against him; the factory soon went bankrupt due to poor management, and Yu, who had just found a foothold, was laid off and forced back onto the streets.
His eldest brother couldn't bear to see him suffer. With his brother's persuasion, his parents forgave Yu and pooled money to open a tobacco and alcohol shop for him.
Yu's initial motive for opening the shop was not pure. He operated for face and wanted to make big money. One day, a stranger came into his shop, claiming he could get scarce Yuxi cigarettes at low prices. Yu saw a quick way to make money and bought from him without much thought. The police traced the source and soon found him. Yu was detained for illegally selling cigarettes.
Yu didn't learn his lesson, thinking the police caught him by chance and that if he were more careful next time, he'd be fine.
After release, he continued with this侥幸 mentality, doing even bigger deals, and was caught again. After two consecutive blows, Yu didn't repent but seemed to gamble with fate, refusing to believe he couldn't make big money. Hearing that mining in the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi could be profitable, he borrowed over 100,000 yuan from relatives and friends and went to Shaanxi to mine. In 1993, he returned to Xuchang penniless, burdened with debts of over 300,000 yuan. For him, turning his life around seemed harder than reaching the sky.
Perhaps those who have suffered setbacks and hardships have a deeper understanding and longing for a happy life. After two years of silence, Yu Donglai seemed like a changed person.
At 29, with 10,000 yuan borrowed from his brother and 60,000 yuan pooled by four laid-off employees, he rented a storefront of over 40 square meters and opened a grocery store in March 1995, named Wangyue Lou Fatty's Store. This was the predecessor of the now-famous Pangdonglai.
This time, Yu insisted on "genuine products for genuine hearts," quickly establishing a foothold in a market flooded with counterfeit goods. By the end of that year, the small store had net profits of over 800,000 yuan, and within less than a year, he paid off debts originally planned to be repaid over six years. His down-to-earth efforts brought quick rewards. From 1995 to 1998, Yu earned about 3 million yuan and opened branches.
Fate's malicious jokes didn't stop. In the early morning of March 15, 1998, a fire broke out in the main store of Fatty's Store on the first floor of Wangyue Lou Hotel. Despite efforts to extinguish it, the store was reduced to ashes. More tragically, seven guests and a waiter in the hotel above died in the fire.
The arson caused Yu direct losses of several million yuan, and he was deeply traumatized, falling ill. With everyone's care and encouragement, he resolved to continue and do even better. He set a grand ambition: "In twenty years, Pangdonglai will be one of the best companies in the world—maybe not the largest, but definitely the happiest."
In 1999, he renamed the store Pangdonglai and reopened, and business took off. Appliance stores, bakeries, clothing stores, and others opened successively. After nearly three years of effort, on New Year's Day 2002, Pangdonglai Life Plaza, Xuchang's largest comprehensive supermarket, opened grandly, creating 500 million yuan in sales in its first year. After over 30 years of trials, the wheel of fate finally turned in the right direction.
Starting in 2003, when he proposed "World-class brand, messenger of civilization," over the next decade or more, Yu led Pangdonglai to focus on self-improvement, gradually becoming one of China's best companies. Revenue was 7 billion yuan in 2022, 10.7 billion in 2023, 17 billion in 2024, and 10 billion in the first five months of 2025.
In the current downturn of the overall retail industry, Yu successfully proved that the essence of business is not just profit but creating happiness. His model of great love challenges traditional business logic and offers three important insights: employee happiness is the cornerstone of business success—only when employees have dignity and a sense of belonging can a company sustain development; customer trust is the strongest competitiveness—sincere service wins markets better than price wars; and business for good is a driver of social progress—companies should bear social responsibility and promote a better society. Yu Donglai, with his personal charisma, has advanced the progress of Chinese business civilization.
The eight retail leaders mentioned in this article, with their unique business wisdom and innovative spirit, have driven the development of China's retail industry at different times and in different fields.
They either created new business models, led industry transformations, broke through the boundaries of traditional retail, or actively explored the advancement of business civilization.
At the same time, in the magnificent development of modern Chinese retail, many other companies and individuals have played important roles. Due to space limitations, they cannot all be detailed. All practitioners in the retail industry, regardless of position or tenure, are promoters of industry progress, collectively writing the glorious chapter of China's retail industry.
The second half of retail may not lie in model innovation but in returning to people. This might be the ultimate code of China's retail industry.
🔺Scan for ticket consultation🔺