CU Opens 20th Store in Malaysia... "Accelerating New Openings and Brand Conversions"

BGF Retail opened its 20th store, 'CU Tengkiera Branch,' in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on the 31st of last month.

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Chunhan] BGF Retail announced on the 1st that it has opened its 20th store, ‘CU Tengkiera Branch,’ in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in partnership with ‘MyNews Holdings.’

The achievement of the 20th store in Malaysia was accomplished by consecutively opening 15 stores in October alone. Notably, among these 15 stores, 6 were cases where MyNews Holdings converted key stores of its existing local convenience store brand MyNews.com into CU stores.

The recent rapid expansion of new CU stores and brand conversions in Malaysia is due to business indicators such as customer count and sales overwhelmingly surpassing those of Japanese competitors. In fact, the first CU store in Malaysia, ‘Centerpoint Branch,’ attracted about 1,000 customers?more than three times the average number of customers per store in Korean convenience stores?immediately after opening. The recently opened ‘IOI City Mall Branch’ attracted an average of about 3,000 customers daily.

The daily average sales of CU in Malaysia are five times larger than those of Japanese competitors. This popularity is thanks to instant-cooked and ready-to-eat products such as tteokbokki and gimbap, which apply CU’s know-how, as well as private brand (PB) products, which account for about 75% of store sales.

MyNews Holdings is expanding its store opening targets beyond Kuala Lumpur to cover the entire Malaysia. CU has confirmed its entry into Genting Highlands, the largest casino resort and landmark in Southeast Asia, within this year. It is also preparing to enter Penang, a representative Southeast Asian resort, and Johor Bahru, Malaysia’s economic special zone.

The conversion of MyNews.com brand convenience stores into CU stores is also accelerating. MyNews Holdings plans to sequentially convert key stores located in major commercial districts of Kuala Lumpur and the metropolitan area into CU stores starting this year.

As local customer awareness increases, franchise inquiries are flooding in. Although CU Malaysia currently operates only directly managed stores, due to the continuous franchise inquiries, it has been accepting a waiting list for franchise consultation meetings scheduled for next year since last month.

A BGF Retail official said, “Based on close cooperation between BGF Retail and overseas partners, we are smoothly progressing toward the goal of opening 40 stores in 2021,” and added, “As Korea’s number one convenience store, we will promote the K-CVS model and our culture worldwide and grow into a top-tier global company that can further enhance our partners’ competitiveness.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.