| Industry | Fashion retailing |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1907 |
| Founder(s) | Kwok Lok (郭樂) and Kwok Chuen (郭泉) |
| Headquarters | Hong Kong |
| Area served | Hong Kong and Mainland China |
| Owner(s) | Karl Kwok Chi Leung |
| Parent | Wing On Company International Limited (Wing On Company) |
| Divisions | Wing On Bank |
| Website | Wing On netshop |
Wing On (Chinese: 永安) is a department store company in Hong Kong.
The company is currently owned by a Hong Kong listed company Wing On Company International Limited (SEHK: 0289), incorporated in Bermuda. The holding company of the listed company itself is Wing On International Holdings Limited, which is owned by Karl Kwok Chi Leung (郭志樑)[1] and the Kwok family.
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Brothers Kwok Lok (郭樂) and Kwok Chuen (郭泉) started the Wing On fruit store in Australia in 1897. In 1907 Kwok Chuen returned to Hong Kong with accumulated savings and founded the Wing On Company, the second Chinese-owned department store in Hong Kong.
They later went on to found Wing On Bank.[2]
It has five outlets in Hong Kong, with 360,000 square feet (33,400 square metres) of shopping space.[3] The five stores are:
The branch at the Wing On Centre was prominently featured in the climactic sequence to the 1985 Jackie Chan film Police Story.
Wing On also had a branch in Shanghai. The Shanghai branch was opened in 1918 on Nanking Road (today's Nanjing Road), and was at the time one of the "big four" department stores of Shanghai. The store occupied two prominent buildings. The distinctive original building stood opposite from the (then) Sincere Department Store. An extension was built next to it in the 1930s. After the communist revolution in China (1949), the store was nationalised, and traded under various names. In 2005, it resumed the Chinese version of the Wing On name (Chinese: 永安; pinyin: Yǒng'ān). However, the store is owned by a separate company to Wing On, called "Yongan Department Store Co Ltd", a state-owned company. This company does not use the "Wing On" name in its English translations. [1] The exterior of the original store was restored to its appearance during the Wing On period. However, the interior has been drastically refurbished. The store has also changed its market orientation, focusing almost exclusively on clothing, with a small department in watches and other accessories.