A SHENZHEN-HEADQUARTERED supermarket chain recently released a notice on staff redundancy that required dismissed staff to collect their wages and compensation from the company before Dec. 15, jiemian.com reported.

    The dismissed employees of A-Best could also choose to sign a new labor contract with Shenzhen Dasheng-A-Best Business Management Co., set up Sept. 20 this year, with 52.5 percent share held by Shenzhen Dasheng Asset Management Ltd. and 25 percent held by A-Best Supermarket Co. Ltd.

    A-Best supermarket was set up by Li Binlan in 1995, and it developed into a store chain in the following years. At its peak, A-Best boasted 116 stores, as well as a turnover of 18 billion yuan (US$2.6 billion).

    However, the supermarket chain has been experiencing downward sales in recent years. Before the redundancy announcement was made this month, A-Best had struggled with such troubles as back pay, debt issues and forced shutdowns by property management companies in the previous few months.

    A-Best shrank from 116 outlets nationwide at its peak to only around 60 in the first half of this year. Last year, it shut down all the stores in Hubei and Jiangxi provinces, leaving around 20 stores in Hunan Province and some in Guangdong.

    An ex-employee of a Shenzhen A-Best store revealed that among the 22 stores in Shenzhen, only several were still in operation, with most of the stores selling only fruit and vegetables, because suppliers would no longer deliver goods to the supermarkets.

    A-Best’s business decline is due to various reasons, according to the Chinese-language report. A staff member of an A-Best store in Hunan said that the causes of its downturn were both inside and outside of the company.

    On one hand, the company’s capital chain went broke because of the bank credit crises. On the other, the high cost of human resources and serious management corruption compounded the situation, the staff member said. Corrupt purchasing practices deprived the company of product competitiveness, diversity and sufficient supply.

    A-Best did not seek solutions to cope with the increasingly competitive environment in the way that some other retailing companies did. It neither improved the appearance of the stores nor equipped the stores with more diverse goods, which made it seem hopeless for such a large supermarket company to eliminate loss.

    As for Dasheng-A-Best Co., which recently took over the business, the old employees don’t have high hopes for it.

    Although it was said that the new company had paid part of the staff members’ salaries for previous months, A-Best was still 2 months behind in salary payments. Some employees were upset by the notice that their time with the company would be reset if they signed a contract with the new company, and refused to sign a new contract.

    (Zhang Qian, Liu Shiyang)