RT-Mart To Open First Membership Warehouse Store in Yangzhou

On Feb. 1, M Club (M会员商店) announced via its official WeChat account that its first store would open to the public in the city of Yangzhou on April 28 of this year.

M Club is a new high-end membership warehouse store belonging to Sun Art Retail Group, which also owns the hypermarket chain RT-Mart in China. The first M Club outlet, remodeled from a former RT-Mart store, will be situated in the core of the city, with a floor space of 35,000 square meters and a parking lot for 800 vehicles.

The store will offer over 200 exclusive products from self-owned brands and commodities with international or Chinese geographical indication protection. These items will cover approximately 20 categories, including fresh food, bakery products and daily necessities. It is reported that M Club has already entered into strategic cooperations with several well-known brands from China and elsewhere.

According to the official announcement, M Club will have two tiers of membership, with one costing 260 Chinese yuan ($38) per year and the other costing 680 yuan ($100) per year. Both membership tiers will provide a rapid home-delivery service of one hour for customers within a three-kilometer radius of the store or two hours within a five-kilometer radius.

The popularity of the membership warehouse club model in China took off in 2019 when the U.S. brick-and-mortar wholesaler Costco opened its first store in Shanghai. Global retail giants such as Sam’s Club and Metro as well as domestic chain brands such as Freshippo and Yonghui soon followed suit after seeing long lines of frenzied customers waiting outside of the Costco store. According to statistics released by the financial media website yilantop.com, over 100 membership warehouse stores were opened in China between 2021 and March 2022.

Image: M Club

This article was translated from Chinese. Read the original article.