CHOW TAI FOOK (01929.HK)  +0.100 (+1.590%)    Short selling $12.45M; Ratio 16.965%   officially opened its Queen's Road Central Concept Store in Central today (10 Sep). The 2,880-square-foot shop adopts a collection-based layout and showcases a variety of gold artisanal production with traditional Chinese characteristics.

In an interview with our reporters, Alan Chan, General Manager of Group Branding at CTF, said the concept shop had been open for a trial period of about two weeks before the official opening and was satisfied with the business during that period.

CTF announced earlier that it will overhaul its retail business and plan to strategically renovate its shops in the next five years. Chan added that CTF would prioritise the refurbishment of some of its old stores that have not been renovated in five to six years. It will also renovate some of its shops when their leases expire and they need to renew their leases or move to new locations.

Chan stated CTF aims to refurbish an average of about 1,000 stores a year, with the number of shops to be refurbished expected to increase year by year. He added that the group has over 60 stores in Hong Kong and the pace of refurbishment will be faster than that of its Mainland outlets, with 5 to 10 shops in Hong Kong expected to undergo refurbishment in the coming year.

He disclosed that all CTF stores have already adopted real-time numerical analysis tools for inspecting sales and inventory figures in real-time, so as to optimise the arrangement of product allocation in different shops. In addition, a new diamond jewellery product, described as one of the group's "iconic" collections, will be launched in the coming one to two months.

(HK stocks quote is delayed for at least 15 mins.Short Selling Data as at 2024-09-20 16:25.)