Yu Kwok-chun (3rd right), chairman and managing director of Yue Hwa, cuts a cake at a party celebrating the company's 50th anniversary.

HONG KONG: Offering a glimpse into the rich culture and history behind its products, Hong Kong's premium Chinese product emporium Yue Hwa has applied its approach to carving a niche, that has overcome a trend that's seen a decline of department stores in general.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary recently, Yue Hwa Chinese Products Emporium Ltd is a highly-reputed retailer of goods of Chinese provenance. Its portfolio covers traditional Chinese medicine, food, traditional-style clothing, imitation antique furniture and handicrafts.

Yu Kwok-chun, chairman and managing director of Yue Hwa, expresses full confidence in the popularity and quality of traditional Chinese products: "They're still loved and will continue to appeal to people."

The company branched into new fields in the 1990s, including property and wholesale, but the core business of Yue Hwa remains traditional Chinese products.

Instead of trimming down, in step with many department store chains, Yue Hwa has expanded overseas by adding two new stores in Singapore in recent years. The move has proven a success. The main Singapore store, in China Town, has become a tourist attraction.

Among the most interesting features of Yue Hwa are its promotional events, which often include displays attractive to tourists, especially related to folk customs and traditional ways of life in the places where the goods originate.

For example, when Yue Hwa introduced products from Sichuan, it mounted an exhibition of the "Heavenly Kingdom's" breathtaking landscapes, diverse ethnic cultures and famed culinary traditions, Yu said.

This charming approach to engage customers has been applied to products from outside China as well. "This kind of promotion featuring Indonesian and Thai products has been highly successful, too," Yu said.

Yue Hwa once functioned as a distributor of mainland products in Hong Kong. Today it has captured a new market, as it achieves an ever growing popularity among mainland tourists in Hong Kong.

An increasing number of mainlanders visiting Hong Kong make stopovers at Yue Hwa. Though they frequently have no difficulty buying similar Chinese products in their hometowns, those sold in Yue Hwa are believed to be of superior quality, making them great gifts to friends and relatives back home.

"I hope Yue Hwa is not just a business but also a channel of traditional culture," Yu said.

(HK Edition 11/13/2009 page1)