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The city's biggest red-flag  department store - Yue Hwa Chinese Products Emporium - will close  its Central branch tomorrow,  leaving only its main store in Jordan. 
The closure comes on Yue Hwa's 50th anniversary year, and follows the closure of a cinema with strong pre-handover mainland connections, the Silver Theatre in Kwun Tong,  after nearly half a century. 
Yue Hwa has closed  two stores in the past six months, including the Tsim Sha Tsui branch on Canton Road, which closed in February.  
The store in Des Voeux Road Central has launched a  sale to clear stock prior to the closure. 
It was to have  closed yesterday, but will stay open  two more days to satisfy customer demand. Yesterday, many bargain-seekers were drawn to the store, which was offering discounts of at least 15 per cent on Chinese medicinal products and had cut the prices of fur and leather products by 40 per cent.
Customers said it was a pity one of the last such mainland product stores in Hong Kong was closing down.
'It  will really inconvenience me,' said a Ms Wan, who was buying ginseng. Buying [in Yue Hwa] ensures that I'm not buying fake goods, especially for Chinese medicine.'
Mr and Mrs Lee, who went to the store to buy some underwear for their father, said: 'There are some things in these Chinese products department stores that can't be substituted by the modern stores. For example, the Chinese medicine and clothes. You can't find them in the new department stores.'
Mrs Lee said: 'But it's natural for it to shut down. The things it sells are somehow outdated. Take the underwear that we bought. Definitely the style is unattractive to the new generation.'
Yu Pang-chun, director and deputy general manager of Yue Hwa, said the closure was due to physical constraints of the location, slow sales and a rent rise.
'The current location [Des Voeux Road Central] is outside the core of Central. This affects our ability to connect with our customers,' he said. The shop had moved there because of redevelopment  in Queen's Road Central.
He said the financial downturn and swine flu had also hit the company. 'We are sacrificing our margins to maintain sales level,' he said, but in contrast to previous downturns, there had not been a corresponding fall in Yue Hwa's operating costs. 
'Rent has even increased in this financial crisis,' he said. The rent on the Central branch is more than HK$600,000 per month.
Yue Hwa had six department stores in Hong Kong at its peak. After this week it will have just one.
Mr Yu said the company was now putting more emphasis on selling Chinese medicine. It operates 14 stand-alone stores selling traditional medicine.




50th anniversary not so golden for Yue Hwa, shutting down in Central