Lam: Pandemic spurs HK retailers to go digital

The unexpected pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation of Hong Kong's once-glorious retail industry, Gordon Lam Chi-wing, board executive director of Bonjour, a Hong Kong-based cosmetics chain operator, said on Monday.

"In addition to (an) e-commerce solution, the city's retailers should seize the chance to mull over how to provide better products and more people-oriented service to customers," Lam said. The honorary president of Hong Kong Cross-border E-commerce Association said these are key solutions for businesses to get through the "ice age" of the industry.

In a one-on-one interview with China Daily, Lam described how last year's prolonged social unrest and the COVID-19 pandemic had forced the city's retail industry to hit rock bottom.

The Hong Kong government on Tuesday announced that the value of total retail sales in July decreased by 23.1 percent compared with the same month in 2019. The value of total retail sales in the first seven months of 2020 plummeted by 32.1 percent compared with the same period in 2019, according to the Census and Statistics Department's latest estimate.

Lam said Hong Kong's retail enterprises had become a bit "lazy" in recent years and the city had fallen behind on ecommerce development compared with the Chinese mainland, as the city had benefited greatly from tourist shopping and relied too much on the Individual Visit Scheme.

The individual visit program, which started in July 2003, allows mainland travelers to visit Hong Kong and Macao on an individual basis. The overall visitor arrivals in Hong Kong in 2018 numbered 65.15 million, 78 percent of whom were from the mainland.

As the months-long border restrictions and social-distancing measures have taken a heavy toll on Hong Kong's tourism and retail industries, Lam said it's time to change, and e-commerce development will be an important part of that shift.

Bonjour is among the city's retail enterprises to change their ecommerce strategy to get through the difficult time. In March, the company trained its first batch of salespeople to sell products in livestreaming. Twenty livestreaming hosts now spend more than eight hours every day selling products on ecommerce and social-media platforms such as Tmall, TikTok, Facebook, and Xiaohongshu.