Mamee-Double Decker scion Vuitton Pang on branching out with South Korean convenience store emart24

Think of Japanese convenience store franchise chain FamilyMart. Or 7-11 in some of our neighbouring countries — the extensive variety in Thailand with everything from packaged edible insects to wigs, for instance, or the bounty of onigiri, sushi and bento meals in Japan, which recently delighted the visiting Olympics entourage (CBC journalist Devin Heroux’s tweeted accounts of 7-11’s culinary offerings went viral as the locals enjoyed his unabashed enthusiasm). A well-planned convenience store goes well beyond its namesake virtue to entice customers to linger.

While observing the convenience store landscape in Malaysia, Vuitton Pang noticed that the pragmatic approach most businesses took translated to equally unsentimental transactions by customers.

“Before FamilyMart opened in Malaysia, convenience stores were seen as dingy stops to pop into for cigarettes, Panadol, bread or condoms,” he says. “The question was, why? When Malaysians travel abroad, they look forward to visiting local convenience stores in a way they wouldn’t here. It wasn’t until the establishment of foreign operators such as FamilyMart here that changed this perception entirely.”