8. Carrefour
Base: nationwide
Revenue: RMB 27.3 billion (US$4.3 billion)
Number of stores: 228
Established in 1959, Carrefour is a French multinational retail corporation and one the world’s largest retailers with 12,225 stores in over 30 countries. It entered Beijing in 1995 as one of the earliest foreign supermarket chains to test the water in China’s retail market scene.
Carrefour has a strong brand presence among western retailers in China as an early player, with over 200 stores spanning 22 provinces and 51 large and medium-sized cities in 2019. Its spacious hypermarkets offering benefits such as one-stop shopping and cheap selling prices allowed its quick expansion in the 2000s, which squeezed out domestic retail chains at that time.
Carrefour is known as the first retail operator to hold food and wine festivals in China, where it offers a wide range of imported wines including its store brand Reflets de Franc and La Cave d’Augustin Florent.
However in recent years, Carrefour was battered by the rising domestic retail chains in China and fierce competition from e-commerce giants including Alibaba and JD.com. In 2019, the group sold 80% of its Chinese operation to Suning.com, one of the largest retailers based in Nanjing, China.
In 2020, Carrefour’s sales revenue reached RMB 27.3 billion (US$4.3 billion), a 12.6% decline from 2019. Its store coverage also shrunk by 2.1% to 228 stores.
To compete with e-commerce players, Suning.com opened Carrefour’s online flagship store on its app with delivery services. To boost its offline wine sales, Carrefour jointly held a grand wine tasting event with Sunning.com in Chengdu in 2020, and expanded its wine portfolio to thousands of imported brands from Bordeaux, Pomerol, Australia, Spain and Japan, as well as China’s renowned brands including Changyu, GreatWall, and Grand Dragon.
