The encyclopedia · Sales & Retail · Strategic decision · 2015-2025
AEON abandoned Beijing: its last mall handed off after mainland losses since 2017
AEON closed its last Beijing mall in September 2025, handing it over to a local operator, after a decade of mainland losses and a retreat south.
永旺梦乐城 · AEON · 鑫嘉汇购物中心 · 2025-09-30
What happened
AEON opened its Fengtai mall in Beijing on 19 September 2015 as a flagship of the 'one-stop experience' shopping-centre format — a big-box mall built around visits, food courts and department-store anchor tenancy. It became the city's last AEON mall as the group's other Beijing sites were given up.
The model stopped paying. From 2017 the group's mainland business ran losses every year, accumulating more than ¥680 million (HK$737m) by the first half of 2024, while revenue fell year on year. E-commerce reshaped consumption, domestic brands expanded, and new formats — community group-buying and discount grocers — squeezed floor space.
On 30 September 2025 the Fengtai mall ended its ten-year run. Its management was handed to Beijing Nanjixing Investment Management's subsidiary Xin Jia Hui Commercial Management, which renamed it Xinjia Hui Shopping Centre and kept it trading from 1 October 2025.
AEON described the exit as a focus decision: its model, it said, suits southern China, and the group was concentrating on Guangdong, Hunan and Hubei — an admission that what won in the south did not travel to the north.
Why it happened
- The 'one-stop' big-box mall was built for visits, and Chinese shoppers stopped making the trip — e-commerce plus finer-grained demand made a mall centred on a single anchor visit a liability.
- AEON treated the mainland as one market, but its format only worked in the south, so the north's stores bled for years before the group admitted the mismatch and pulled back.
- Local rivals and new formats — community group-buying, discount grocers — filled the space AEON's mall left, so the last Beijing site went to a local operator matched to the neighbourhood.
The lesson
A retail format that works in one region is not a strategy for another. The north bled for years because one playbook ran everywhere instead of admitting the model only paid in the south.
Aftermath
AEON's Fengtai mall in Beijing, the group's last in the city, ended operations on 30 September 2025 and was handed to Beijing Nanjixing Investment Management's subsidiary Xin Jia Hui Commercial Management, which renamed it Xinjia Hui Shopping Centre and kept it trading from 1 October 2025. The exit came after the mainland business ran losses every year since 2017, accumulating over ¥680 million. AEON said it was concentrating on Guangdong, Hunan and Hubei, where its model fit southern Chinese commercial development better — a retreat to the region where the format pays.
Sources
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