AEON ends tie-up with Fivimart after four years of no success
AEON ends tie-up with Fivimart after four years of no success
Retail giant AEON has judged that its partnership with Fivimart will yield no fruits and is terminating the tie-up after four years of cooperation.
In AEON’s Japanese-language press release, AEON Co., Ltd said that it has dissolved its partnership with Hanoi-based Fivimart, getting rid of its 30 per cent stake in Fivimart.However, there is no information about who will take over this stake yet.
With the aim to help AEON set up a distribution network of goods and reduce the amount of initial capital outlay while laying the groundwork for its plan to construct a series of shopping malls in Vietnam in the future, AEON acquired 30 per cent of Fivimart and 49 per cent of Citimart.
AEON decided to terminate the partnership believing that it will not prove fruitful due to the stark differences in their management strategies, including ways to open outlets. This means AEON will withdraw from 23 Fivimart stores, while maintaining its partnership with Ho Chi Minh City-based Citimart.
AEON said that this movement will not affect its operations in Vietnam.
AEON Group is preparing to open more small stores in emerging Asian markets like Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam. In particular, it aims to raise the number of its stores in Vietnam almost nine-fold to 500 by 2025.
AEON Group has four shopping malls in Hanoi, Binh Duong, and Ho Chi Minh City and is regarded as a major competitor on the Vietnamese retail scene. It plans to build a new mall in Hanoi and another in Haiphong in the short run, and have 20 malls across the country by 2020.
Meanwhile, AEON Group has been in partnership with Japan’s Sojitz Corporation to develop Ministop convenience stores. The two firms aim to raise the number of their joint outlets to 800 in the next eight years.
