The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2015–2025
UGO U購Select: 100 Hong Kong stores down to 4 as China Resources pulls back
UGO U購Select, China Resources' HK discount supermarket, shrank from ~100 stores to 4 by late 2025 as consumers shopped north and online.
UGO 華潤 U購Select · 華潤萬家 (China Resources Vanguard) · China Resources Group · 2025-11
What happened
U購Select (UGO) is the discount supermarket brand of 華潤萬家 (China Resources Vanguard), which has operated in Hong Kong since 1984. The UGO brand launched in 2015 with two stores and rode a store-location boom to a peak of about 100 outlets by 2023, opening its 100th store that March at 屯門和田商場. It became a fixture of local housing-estate malls.
From 2023 the chain began closing loss-making stores. Management said Hong Kong consumption sentiment had not visibly improved while competition intensified, so dozens of branches were shut: the count fell to about 57, then to 40 mid-year, and drifted lower through 2024 and 2025.
By the end of October 2025 only six stores remained, and none in Kowloon. Two more in Tseung Kwan O closed in November, leaving just four — the brand's lowest point. Staff at the closing branches were laid off or reassigned, and one worker said the chain was 'wasting rent of over HK$100,000 a month' on stores that no longer drew footfall.
Why it happened
- Hong Kong consumers shopped north across the border for cheaper groceries while e-commerce and delivery undercut a discount supermarket's price advantage, squeezing thin margins.
- High rents in housing-estate malls made a low-margin discount format fragile: a store that stopped turning a profit could not be carried on the rent it paid.
- The month-by-month shutdown, rather than a decisive overhaul, shows management shrank stores one at a time instead of confronting whether the format still worked.
The lesson
A discount format survives on volume, and volume moved across the border. When customers leave a market, shrinking store by store only delays the inevitable — decide to exit, or fix the format, first.
Aftermath
By November 2025 UGO operated only four Hong Kong stores, all in the New Territories. The brand's retreat was part of a broader contraction for physical grocery retail in Hong Kong, as consumption shifted north and online. Staff at closed branches were laid off or reassigned within 華潤萬家.
Sources
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