Homegrown fashion retailer Golden ABC, Inc. targets to open more than 100 new stores in the Philippines and across Asia next year. Bernie Liu, chief executive officer, said 100 more stores will open in the country while 25 others will open across Asia.
Liu said they continue to be bullish about the Philippines, despite the entry of numerous foreign retail brands. “We have been competing with these international brands for years now in other parts of Asia. Our goal is to bring a Filipino brand into the international arena,” Liu said at the sidelines of the blessing and inauguration of three new stores at the SM Seaside City Cebu yesterday.
Golden ABC’s flagship brand, Penshoppe, opens its biggest store today along with about 160 others at the SM Seaside, the biggest mall in Cebu and in southern Philippines. Penshoppe Seaside, the sixth in Cebu, has a footprint of 850 square meters, an upgrade from its usual 300- to 400-square-meter stores. Other Golden ABC stores that were inaugurated at SM Seaside yesterday were ForMe and Oxygen.
The company started with a single Penshoppe store in Cebu in 1986. Golden ABC now has about 700 stores in the Philippines and across Asia. “We have more than 600 stores in the Philippines and about 50 stores which are in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Vietnam,” Liu said.
He said Southeast Asian countries have warmly accepted the brand. Just recently, they opened a store in Vivo City in Ho Chi Minh. “We are very encouraged by the response in Vietnam,” Liu said. As they continue to compete in the fashion arena, Penshoppe is looking at two more new territories in Asia.
In Indonesia, the brand has 26 stores, and they are opening 2 to 3 more by the end of the year.
Penshoppe is known to work with world-class brand ambassadors. They had One Direction, Sean O’ Pry, Cara Delevigne, Kendall Jenner, and Korean model-singer Sandara Park. Having these fashion icons as endorsers for Penshoppe speaks volume about how this brand has gone global.
Other brands under Golden ABC – aside from Penshoppe, ForMe and Oxygen – are Memo, Regatta, Tyler and direct-selling subsidiary Red Logo.