Billionaire Li Ka-shing’s health and beauty retail group opens third store in Vietnam

While its first Vietnam store was opened on the ground floor of the city’s high-profile Bitexco tower, the third store has been placed in Vincom Thu Duc, and the second store was opened in Go Vap district, according to the information posted on the company’s website.

The Hong Kong-based health and beauty retail chain owned by billionaire Li ka-shing plans to have 50 stores in Vietnam within five years, which would place it third behind Singaporean Guardian, with 70 stores, and local Medicare which operates 80 outlets, it told local media.

However, Watsons Vietnam stores will compete with rival Hong Kong healthcare and beauty chain Guardian, owned by Dairy Farm International, which launched in Ho Chi Minh City in 2011 and now claims to have more than 60 stores in four cities.

The retail chain is majority-owned by the multinational conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings, with just over 75 percent, after the remaining stake was sold to Singapore-government-owned Temasek Holdings in March 2014, South China Morning Post reported.  

Established in Hong Kong in 1841, A.S. Watson Group is the world’s largest international health and beauty retailer with over 15,700 stores in 25 markets.

Vietnam is the 13th operating market of Watsons. Every year, over 5 billion customers and members shopped with our 12 retail brands in stores and online, the group said.