Houston Chinatown: Golden Foods Supermarket

Golden Foods Supermarket finally opened its doors. Actually, the grand opening was last Friday, May 27th, but a lot of people were not aware of the opening. "I had to ask around and finally someone said yeah, they opened last Friday," says Pham Nguyen. "I guess they wanted a subdued grand opening." I get that feeling of dejavu. Everytime a store opens in Chinatown, not many people know about it.

The reason is that Chinese people are very tightlipped and spendthrift in my opinion. More spendthrift than anything else. The problem with that is why and how will people come to your store if you do not market or advertise it. And another problem is that even if they do advertise, they do it through the Chinese newspapers. Nothing wrong with that, but 95% of the population in Houston do not read Chinese. So they are in reality, advertising to the 5% of the people in Houston. And of those 5%, probably 2-3% are there targeted demographic group.

I'm not a marketing major or scientist, but I understand numbers. That is just not going to cut it. If you look at those truly successful Chinese stores, they advertise and market to the 95% population as well. That is how you get publicity and lots of it.

One of these days, when I have more time, I will write a comprehensive article noting the difference between Chinese stores who advertise only in Chinese newspapers and those who diversify there advertisement strategy. You will see a definite corrolation between sales and success between these two groups.

Anyways, just wanted to throw that out since not many people know Golden Foods Supermarket is open becuase of the reason I stated before. If Golden Foods decide to rely on heresy as their marketing tool, or those people who can read Chinese, then they are going to be in for a long ride to failure.