Watsons China to open 300 physical stores this year

This will help accelerate its Offline Plus Online platform strategy.

Watsons China is planning to launch 300 new physical stores in 2023 to boost further its offline plus online (O+O) strategy as customer sentiment improves.

In a statement, Malina Ngai, CEO of A.S. Watsons (Asia & Europe) said its O+O platform strategy will help the health and beauty retailer to understand the customers’ needs better.

“Our customer insights show that at Watsons China the spending of our O+O customers who shop with us in both physical and online stores is 3.1 times more than those who shop with us only in the physical stores. Thus, O+O platform strategy is proved to be very important for us,” she said.

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In the past three years of the pandemic, Watsons China opened nearly 850 physical stores to ramp up its O+O platform strategy. It also renovated store designs of about 440 stores in over 300 cities on the Mainland.

It is currently operating 3,900 stores in 500 cities, including an upgraded store in Shanghai Qingpu Wuyue Plaza and a Colorlab 2.0 makeup concept store in Jiangsu Changzhou Wuyue Plaza.