The Mall Group, one of the country's leading store chains, is grooming a new generation for management and recruiting more expatriates to help map out its business strategy to cope with the digital wave.
The transition for the family-run company to a more professional structure became clearer a couple of days ago when the company arranged a "Legend of Our Love Party" for 10 long-serving executives who worked for The Mall for 21-31 years.
The retired top executives included Pira Assavapirom, former senior chief merchandising officer for supermarkets, Phaibul Kanokvatanawan, who was the group's chief executive, Chamnarn Maytaprechakul, senior chief marketing officer and Malinee Subboriboon, the senior chief merchandising officer for fashion and beauty.
The event was attended foreign executives who handle key business departments for the group, except for the top management of marketing and chief executive, positions reserved for Thai executives.
The group's new chief executive is Matthew Kichodhan, who was previously the head of Wave Entertainment Plc.
Wave Entertainment Plc, operator of the Jeffer steak chain and the language learning centre Wall Street English, sold a 10% stake in March to The Mall Group. This is the first time The Mall Group has invested in a listed restaurant, an event organiser and an English-language learning company.
The Mall Group's investment in Wave Entertainment is likely a part of the group's strategic plan to expand into the food and restaurant business.
The Mall started recruiting foreign professionals to join the group a few years ago, mainly in the shopping complex business development, visual merchandise for sport and electrical appliances and fashion, information technology and strategic areas.
There are more than a dozen of foreign top executives working for The Mall Group. A majority of them have long-time experience in retail business in Europe, particularly from Galeries Lafayette and Printemps in France.
In addition to the new generation of management, the company also plans to announce a big development in the second half of this year. Sales for The Mall was about 50 billion baht last year.
"The Umpujh family is not a large clan like our competitors, so we need outside professionals to help run our business. Blending local expertise with foreign knowledge and international management capability is a new challenge for The Mall Group," said a member of the Umpujh's family who asked not to be named.
The Mall Group's strategy stands in contrast to the Chirathivat family, the owners of Central Group of Companies, who prepare younger family members to take over the retail business empire while recruiting local and foreign executives into its management team a couple of years ago.
Separately, Yol Phokasab, president of Central Group, said yesterday at the Asean Business Summit arranged by Bloomberg that the world changes quickly through innovation and technological disruption.
"We are disrupted, but we move on by launching new strategies to become the market leader in the digi-lifestyle platform," Mr Yol said.
Under the new strategy, the company will put more focus in two areas: repositioning its existing business for today's world and creating new things for business tomorrow.
"We want to be an omni-channel retail platform and become a technology and data-based company through partnerships," he said.
The company soft-launched Central JD.Com in June to warm up its system and is planning to officially launch in September this year.
"All business units under Central Group have gone online and seen a good response from customers," Mr Yol said.
The spending power of consumers in the first half this year improved and Central's sales saw a higher growth rate than the country's GDP.
Apart from Thailand, the company will put more focus on expanding business in Vietnam, he said.
When the company first entered Vietnam several years ago, revenue was 100 million baht. It reached 45 billion baht in recent years.
"We are having some serious discussions about Myanmar. We studied the opportunities after the economy opened up. Business there will operate under a different business model from Bangkok," Mr Yol said.