Gome Will Open 100,000 Micro Stores Throughout China

Chinese electronics retailer Gome will increase its retail outlets this year.

According to Wang Junzhou, president of Gome, the company plans to open 100,000 mobile micro stores in China in 2015. At present, this project is undergoing trials in Xiamen and Xi'an with about 10,000 micro stores.

Actually, the stores appear to be more like customer service representatives, so investors who have high hopes of more brick-and-mortar stores for the company should be aware the company is most likely counting each customer service associate as a "store".

By opening mobile micro stores, Gome says its employees will be able to realize one-on-one communications with customers though the Friends' Circle function of WeChat to provide better products to customers and attract more consumers to Gome.com.cn.

Mu Guixian, chairman of Gome.com.cn, said that they will launch an independent app along with a WeChat public account. Gome currently has 300,000 employees and those mobile micro stores will be opened by Gome employees.

Fang Wei, chief financial officer of Gome Group, revealed that the company's gross merchandise volume reached CNY7.7 billion in 2014. In addition, Gome's latest annual statistics showed that the company's e-commerce trading value saw a year-on-year increase of 84.41%; its number of new users on mobile devices increased by 97.2% year-on-year; and its mobile trading value accounted for 19.4% of its total online trading value.