Beginning 5 November, five Giant supermarkets will cease operations in outlets located at Sri Manjung, Sungai Petani, Shah Alam City Centre (SACC) Mall, Sibu and Selayang Lama.
This decision reportedly comes as GCH Retail Malaysia, who owns the Giant brand, decided to not extend the leasing contracts for those outlets.
According to a statement, the company took this step after reviewing the operations and found that this was the best measure to improve efficiency and productivity, as reported by Free Malaysia Today.
At the same time, Giant’s Bercham outlet will reportedly be relocated to a larger premise that offer a wider range of products and provide more convenience for customers.
However, the fate of the employees at these affected outlets is still unknown. GCH Retail also didn’t elaborate further on why they decided not to extend the lease.
This could be due to the reported decline in sales seen in the retail sector, especially during the second quarter of 2017.
Based on a report by The Malaysian Insight, the supermarket and hypermarket subsector suffered the worst decline during the first quarter of the year.
Achieving only a 4.8 per cent growth rate, this makes it the worst performing sector among all the retail subsectors.
Malaysia Retailers Association further added that department stores and supermarket operators are to expect a further decline in sales by 2.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2017, as reported by The Malaysian Insight.
On a lighter note, folks living near the five mentioned Giant outlets should head there this week before they close down because apparently you can find super cheap items from as low as RM1!
