Central Retail goes Global
Who doesn't know them Thailand established department stores of Central, Zen and Robinson? It all sounds a bit English and especially with Robinson you have the feeling that you are dealing with a Western company.
Very wrong, because all mentioned companies are part of Central Retail Corp., one of Thailand's largest retail companies.
Expansion urge
You will find Central Retail stores in almost all major cities in Thailand. There are hardly any expansion opportunities for the department stores sector in their own country, because the disposable income of the Thai is a problem that other Thai companies also have to contend with. The only way out for expansion is abroad. Previously, Central Retail was already looking to expand in China, but the four department stores are operating considerably less successfully there.
La Rinascente
In May 2011, the Italian La Rinascente, a 150-year-old fashion retail chain with eleven branches in major cities such as Rome, Milan, Turin, Florence, Palermo, Monza and Genoa, was acquired by Central Retail for 260 million euros. They want to further expand the chain in Italy, but there are also plans to open branches in Jakarta, Vietnam and Myanmar.
The history
Central Retail is part of the Central Group and owned by the Chirathivat family, ranked 4th richest in Thailand on the Forbes list with an estimated net worth of US$4.4 billion.
It all started in 1927 when Tiang Chirathivat left the island of Hainan in southern China for Thailand at the age of 22. In the Thonburi district within Bangkok, the young Tiang started selling coffee and newspapers. It did him no harm, because in 1957 he opened his first department store together with his eldest son Samrit. Tiang had three wives and no less than 25 children with them, of which about fifty are currently employed within the group.
In addition to the department stores mentioned, the well-known Power Buy electronics stores also belong to the group. The Tops supermarkets, which have now expanded to 217 stores, which once belonged to the Dutch Ahold group, are now also fully owned by Central Retail. Bookstores and hardware stores, including Home Works, demonstrate the company's diversity
It's like the Thai edition of the American Dream: from paperboy to millionaire.
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Then just about every shopping mall in Thailand is for half of this family. Add to that Sizzlers and Swensen and Pizzacompany (I could be wrong), they all have 1 owner and then you have about 75% of the shopping malls that all belong to the same owners.
It is then high time for shops like Aldi to provide competition, otherwise the Thai will be completely at the mercy of these superpowers.
Sizzler, Swensen and Pizza Company I believe belong to MINOR, another publicly traded company. Which incidentally is owned by an American who has exchanged his American nationality for a Thai one.
But it is true that there tends to be a lack of competition in the Thai market. There are about 50-100 Thai Chinese families who rule Thailand; they all know each other and make (backroom) deals with each other.
Business life is therefore largely determined by the Thai Chinese, while the army and police have traditionally been dominated by Thai Thais. But throughout the Shinawatra and Red/Yellow division, that status quo has been challenged a bit.
That's right from that American who runs the restaurant chains, I've heard that before. He manages to run decent restaurants that work according to Western standards. A Thai can't do that anywhere because then the staff just do what they feel like and if it goes wrong then it's mai ben rai.
The Thai may be so proud that they have never been occupied by other countries, but in the meantime they are under the thick of these foreigners who control the shopping malls.
I don't understand how they let it get this far. In my experience, only very young people who are barely educated work in all the shops/restaurants mentioned. They work there (at Powerbuy and Homeworks for example) on a commission basis and that is noticeable because they are very pushy. Homeworks is a kind of market square where the big brands rent a part of the shop and then set up their own staff. These staff are only allowed to sell their own brand and do their very best to do so. The sellers fall over each other to advise their brand so that they collect the bonus.
I have often experienced that, for example, in Homeworks I do not see the price listed, when I ask the staff, they call angrily, offer a chair and after 5 minutes you are told a fairly high price for which I do not want to buy it. Elsewhere you will find the same product for almost half, but for that you have to shop around and compare and request the price everywhere and a Thai has no time or no sense for that.
The salespeople prefer to chatter with each other all day instead of making sure a customer leaves the store satisfied.
Recently I was shopping in the department store in Siam Paragon when 2 staff members were frolicking wildly. They didn't see me coming and I got a full blow in the crotch from a frolicking salesman. Solly sir was his response and they happily continued to frolic.
The service in stores is very variable. What also strikes me is that there is often a surplus of shop assistants. Unemployment in Thailand may be only 2 to 3%, but I often get the impression that companies and shops employ too many people. I think that is a bit due to the fact that employing many people is also a bit of prestige in Thailand. But that inefficiency is of course simply passed on to the customer.
Dear Thaitanic,
It makes me dizzy a bit. So you have Thai Thai, Thai Chinese, also called Sino-Thai, a Thai American and what should I call my son, a loeg khreung? A cheese head Thai? Come on, let's call them all Thai, if that's their nationality, without mentioning their ethnic origin, if it's not strictly necessary. This is also of the utmost importance for the future of my son. If he chooses to stay here, I don't want him to ever be called to account for his half-Dutch origin.
Also don't forget that there are hardly any Thai Thais. Almost all Thais are of mixed descent, which goes back centuries.
Tino, yesterday my wife and I were walking around the park when 3 Thai kids walked towards us. A girl of say 3-4 years old looked at me with big eyes and she to her brother: ohh that's a real fallang. We had to laugh because yes, aren't there real fallang in Thailand?
Who cares what you're called? A chino-thai is a chinese to me, a white thai like on tv is a half blood farang or half blood thai what you want. A brown thai is a thai to me. A white-painted thai is a make-up box to me.
Dear Tina,
I only brought it up because I think that in Thailand (unlike Indonesia and the Philippines, for example) there is a fairly good harmony between the descendants of Chinese immigrants and those of the 50 or so tribes (if I'm right) from which the original Thai population exists. But I think that is achieved through a certain balance of power, in this case between business versus police and the military. In the long run we all mix (racially), that's why scientists already speak of the "mocha man". But in the shorter term, I think we should make sure that there is not too much envy between certain ethnic boundaries, even if those boundaries are certain to crumble over time. Of course, the inevitability of our fate doesn't make mixing any less complex, as your son can attest. But in fact, on the theory that we will all intermingle, he pulls the (inevitable) hot coals out of the fire for his descendants…
"Tiang had three wives and no less than 25 children with them, of which about fifty are currently working within the group"
This doesn't seem computationally correct to me 🙂
Lou, you are absolutely right. I just worded it wrong. There are still about 50 family members working in the company. So, among other things, Liang's grandchildren again.
Joe, you definitely don't live in Thailand. He had 3 wives, but nothing is written about how many mia nois. If the mia noi's had children, they also count, albeit not officially.
is just a very Asian chain, which is also present and well known in all surrounding western-oriented countries around Th. More a kind of V&D.
Tookie should read a bit better - those shopping malls are therefore in the hands of the Sino-Thai.\
Tesco is 50/50 English-Thai (the old Lotus) and BigC (including old |Carrefour) is 50/50 of the French (Casino once had the Superboer supermarkets in NL) and the Thai who once started BigC - and then discovered that they hadn't eaten so much cheese from the hypermarkets.
The Lotus chain is now also expanding considerably in China - while Tesco is now a major competitor there - just like Carrefour (is THE profit maker for CF)