TapTechNews August 7th news, according to LatePost report, Hema, which has changed its leader four months ago, is regrouping its morale. At the all-staff meeting in June, the new CEO Yan Xiaolei clearly said: "Hema will not be sold." She has said similar words at the new employee training and the activities for old employees of "3-year" and "5-year".
It is reported that Yan Xiaolei also set a goal of an annual GMV of 100 billion yuan in three years for Hema, an increase of 69% compared to 2023, and she said, "By then Hema has become one of the leading retailers in China, and going public will be a natural thing."
It is mentioned in the report that Hema achieved off-season profit for the first time from March to June this year. The last time Hema achieved consecutive and overall profit was in the fourth quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023. In the second half of 2023, Hema is preparing to go public and carry out "discount reform", and then fell into loss. Four consecutive months of off-season profit means that Hema has the hope of achieving long-term and stable profit.
This is the result of Hema's contraction of scale and reduction of staff and cost reduction in the past two years - the number of Hema stores in 2023 has decreased by 30% compared to 2021; in March this year, some Hema store employees were transferred to outsourcing and meal subsidies were cancelled; since April this year, after the membership store business no longer continued to expand, about 10% of the personnel were laid off.
In addition, Hema has closed two membership stores (need to pay to become a member to shop, similar to Sam's) at the beginning of this year and will not open new stores for the time being, but will focus resources on fresh food stores and NB stores:
TapTechNews noticed that in November last year, Alibaba Group announced that the listing of Hema was postponed, and the news that Ali's offline retail businesses including Hema, Gao Xin Retail, and Intime have been repeatedly rumored to be sold, while Hema officials said the rumors were not true.