Wong is the largest supermarket

Supermarket

A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

 chain in Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

. Known until 2005 as E. Wong, it started as a small store opened in 1942 by Chinese Peruvians in a residential area

Residential area

A residential area is a land use in which housing predominates, as opposed to industrial and commercial areas.Housing may vary significantly between, and through, residential areas. These include single family housing, multi-family residential, or mobile homes. Zoning for residential use may permit...

 of the San Isidro District in Lima

Lima

Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...

. Today, the Wong Group has 34 stores throughout the city, including 14 Wong (supermarkets), 17 Metro (11 hypermarkets and 6 supermarkets), 7 Eco Almacenes (discount stores) and 3 American Outlet.

History and development

In 1942, Erasmo Wong, a Chinese-Peruvian

Chinese-Peruvian

Chinese Peruvians, also known as tusán , are people of Overseas Chinese ancestry born in Peru, or who have made Peru their adopted homeland....

, opened a small store at a corner in Avenida Dos de Mayo, in a residential area in San Isidro. Originally a family business, the store kept growing and in 1983, the first store of the present-day Wong supermarket chain was inaugurated. The next store to be opened was located in Óvalo Gutiérrez, in Miraflores. Some years later, stores in Santiago de Surco were also opened; and by 1995, Wong had five stores all around Lima.

Wong's growth was characterized by going against market trends, being more customer service oriented instead of the more usual self-service and investing during some of the Peruvian economy's hardest times.

Wong recently opened a mall in Independencia District

Independencia District, Lima

Independencia is a district of the Lima Province in Peru. It is part of city of Lima.Officially established as a district on March 16, 1964, the current mayor of Independencia is Lovell Yomond Vargas. The district's postal code is 28....

, in North Lima, called Plaza Norte, which is supposed to be the most luxurious and complete mall of that part of the capital.
Wong opened there first supermarkets in the provinces when they took over a local chain in Trujillo in 2008.

Company information

While Wong focuses on bringing customers product variety and a highly personalized service, their Metro hypermarket

Hypermarket

In commerce, a hypermarket is a superstore combining a supermarket and a department store. The result is an expansive retail facility carrying a wide range of products under one roof, including full groceries lines and general merchandise...

 chain offers lower prices and self-service stores. Metro supermarkets are very similar to Wong ones. On the other hand, American Outlet stores are focused on offering brand-new imported products, mainly brought from USA and Europe. Finally, Eco Almacenes stores offer products in large quantities, in order to be sold to big entrepreneurs and to other small shops.

It is widely known that Wong treats its employees (and customers too) very well. For example, instead of calling them “workers”, they call them “collaborators”. Therefore, it has earned several awards for the excellence of its service.

The Gran Corso de Fiestas Patrias, a large parade

Parade

A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind...

 held annually a few weeks before July 28, the day of Peruvian independence, is organized by Wong and attended by more than 100,000 persons. The parade is usually celebrated in Miraflores

Miraflores District, Lima

Miraflores is a district of the Lima Province in Peru. Known for its shopping areas, gardens, flower-filled parks and beaches, it is one of the upscale districts that make up the city of Lima....

 and ends with a fireworks

Fireworks

Fireworks are a class of explosive pyrotechnic devices used for aesthetic and entertainment purposes. The most common use of a firework is as part of a fireworks display. A fireworks event is a display of the effects produced by firework devices...

 display.

Buyout & Market Share

On December 16, 2007 it was announced that Wong was bought by the Chilean company Cencosud, the 100% of the assets from Wong were sold for an amount of 500 million dollars to the Chilean group, 200 in cash and 300 in stocks from the Chilean corporation.

This action, plus the fact that this very possibility was denied by Efraín Wong himself mere months earlier was taken very negatively by the Peruvian populace; marking the beginning of a slow decline in Wong market share.

The 2008 Independence Day Parade was viewed by many as a fiasco since Wong no longer had the required "nationalism" to hold such an event, however, its attendance still overshadowed a copycat event by rival Supermercados Peruanos

Supermercados Peruanos

Supermercados Peruanos is the second largest supermarket and hypermarket chain in Peru. Although its operations were concentrated around Lima at first, the chain started to expand in Peru by opening a store in Arequipa, Trujillo and Chiclayo in 2007...

.

As of September 2008, Wong market share has decreased to less than 30% of the market (from a high if 44% two years earlier) and shows no signs of going back up. Adding this to the fact that prices in Wong — being slowly standardized to Cencosud's levels — have risen by 11% overall in the last year, shows an uncertain future for Peru's former king of supermarkets.