JOYCE, Hong Kong's legendary buyer store, closed its last mainland store in 2023

On January 15, 2023 JOYCE closed its Shanghai Plaza 66 store — its last in mainland China. The buyer store founded by 马郭志清 (Joyce Ma) in 1971 had once been the gateway through which Hong Kong discovered fashion: it introduced Armani, Missoni, Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake in the 1970s, and its Beijing China World flagship had already closed in 2021.

The exit followed a long decline. JOYCE sold 51% of itself to Wheelock in 2000 for HK$200 million after the Asian financial crisis, Joyce Ma left management in 2007, and the group was privatized in December 2019 and delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in April 2020 after four consecutive years of losses — its final reported year showed revenue down 2.1% to HK$842 million. At its peak the group ran 52 stores across Greater China; by 2021 it operated 39.

Analysts described the format itself as the casualty. Savills' 董肇奇 called department-store-style buyer stores 'a product of the era' increasingly isolated by the market; media veteran Queennie Yang said JOYCE 'indulged in old dreams, stood still, and lost its pioneering meaning.' The reasons were structural: the internet ended the information gap a buyer store sold, cross-border shopping made the bridge obsolete, a younger generation did not share the old fashion-elite aesthetic, and JOYCE came late to e-commerce and streetwear.