Aeon Stores (Hong Kong), a general merchandise retailer, will officially open a Jusco store in east Kowloon on Saturday, 12 years after the previous Jusco store opened in Tuen Mun in 1998.
The retailer was also negotiating with landlords in the city to open another Jusco store, the seventh in Hong Kong, managing director Soul Lam said yesterday.
East Kowloon, where the population is growing rapidly, is the preferred location for further development, including, but not limited to, a Jusco store. Aeon also operates bargain stores, or the so-called 10-dollar markets, supermarkets and restaurants.
Although the number of department stores in the city has diminished over the past decades, Lam shrugged off the idea that Hong Kong people have turned their back on them. 'We discovered that shoppers in Hong Kong are still interested in the one-stop shopping experience,' Lam said.
The 120,000-square-metre new store, which opened on a trial basis yesterday, registered a record-breaking 3,000 new membership enrolments in one day.
'The major obstacle [for opening a new store] in Hong Kong is that the landlords of shopping malls generally are reluctant to lease out a sizeable enough floor area for us to install our stores, or they ask for a very high price,' Lam said. 'That's why we appreciate the support that Kerry Properties [the landlord of Mega Box] has offered to us.'