How Retail Giant DFI is Adapting to Asia’s Shopping Shake-Up

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]Retail in Asia is moving at breakneck speed.

[00:00:03]Margins are tighter. Consumers are  changing. Competition is everywhere.

[00:00:08]The pace of change in retail is  probably the highest I've ever seen it.

[00:00:13]Behind the supermarket shelves, pharmacies and  convenience stores millions rely on each day, DFI Retail Group is navigating  relentless disruption.

[00:00:23]If you're not looking for new ways to serve  your customers, you're going to get left behind.

[00:00:34]Behind many of Asia's everyday  shopping experiences is a company consumers never see - DFI Retail Group.

[00:00:43]One of the region's largest retailers,  it operates thousands of outlets across supermarkets, convenience stores, health and  beauty, home furnishings and restaurants.

[00:00:54]Serving millions of customers, it's navigating a landscape reshaped by e-commerce, rising  costs, and shifting consumer demand.

[00:01:03]At the helm is CEO Scott Price,  a veteran in the industry.

[00:01:08]So, Scott, you've got over 30  years of experience in retail and the consumer package business  here in Asia. What is it about this part of the world that excites you,  that's made you stay for so long?

[00:01:19]Well, I think it starts first with  the people. Early in my student life, I lived in Japan and fell in love with Asia and  so the complexity of North Asia, Southeast Asia, the people, and then just the second part of such  a huge difference in terms of economic growth and opportunity serving that kind of a complex  portfolio, I just find intellectually interesting.

[00:01:39]You like complexity?

[00:01:40]I love complexity.

[00:01:42]DFI Retail Group operates across five  core retail segments in Asia. In food, it runs supermarket brands  like Wellcome, Market Place, and 3hreesixty in Hong Kong, alongside a  growing portfolio of own-brand products.

[00:01:57]In convenience, it operates 7-Eleven stores across the region. Its health and beauty  business includes Guardian and Mannings.

[00:02:05]In home furnishings, it operates  IKEA stores in several Asian markets.

[00:02:10]And through Maxim’s, it brings global  food and beverage brands like Starbucks, Shake Shack and The Cheesecake Factory to Asia.

[00:02:18]Connecting it all is Yuu, DFI’s  customer rewards and data platform, linking millions of shoppers across its ecosystem.

[00:02:28]Together, it forms one of Asia’s  largest retail networks. At a time when pressures on retail continue to grow.

[00:02:36]You know, retail has always been challenging.  Today you've got to deal with e-commerce pressure, you've got to deal with weak consumer  sentiment, geopolitics, cost of inflation.

[00:02:46]Is this the toughest operating environment  you've seen or has retail always been tough?

[00:02:52]I've been in Asia 35 years. I think the pace of change in retail is probably  the highest I've ever seen it.

[00:03:00]First is just simply the current  economic environment is really tough, right? Interest rates, inflation.

[00:03:06]The second is just the geopolitical situation  causes quite a bit of supply chain stresses.

[00:03:12]But we have some macro trends like the aging of  populations and how they consume. And then the pace of technology change means that, you  go back 30 years ago, there were Western big boxes in every single market. They're all  gone because people just don't shop that way.

[00:03:28]There used to be giant fulfillment  centers to deliver e-commerce in two days. Those are declining because  people now want instant commerce. So, the ability to pivot and make a profit is much  harder I think now than it was 30 years ago.

[00:03:43]Geopolitics never seems to go away.  There's always this concern about what it would mean for the impact of  oil and how it would feed through to the retail consumer at the end of the  day. Is this constantly on your radar?

[00:03:56]It is. And for mass retailer -  Look, we're daily essentials. We are not luxury. There's insurance in  that because no matter what happens, people have to eat. They're going to shower,  for the most part every single day. So, we're quite protected in the sense that  we're going to have a solid demand.

[00:04:11]What our challenge is as a mass retailer  is to make sure that we are lowest cost so that we have the opportunity to bring  the lowest prices down to our customers.

[00:04:19]So, that means that as we think about  our country of origin where we source, we source more than 50 countries  around the world. As a result, we always have to have the ability to pivot very  quickly to protect that pricing to customers.

[00:04:31]That ability to pivot is already  playing out across the business.

[00:04:35]Over the past year, DFI has  made two strategic moves.

[00:04:39]In Singapore, it sold the supermarket business for 125 million Singapore dollars,  or about 93 million U.S. dollars.

[00:04:48]In mainland China, it closed  all its Mannings stores, while maintaining an online presence  through Chinese e-commerce platforms.

[00:04:57]We had about a hundred stores of our Mannings  Health and Beauty in China. As we looked at what it takes to win, we had to be 2,000 stores  to have the scale to be able to win in China.

[00:05:10]As I thought about our use of capital, I would  rather put that capital in Southeast Asia, which has a longer term, I think, headway for  the business moving forward in Southeast Asia.

[00:05:21]Are you done with your divestments?

[00:05:23]Good question. We constantly keep an eye on  the portfolio, but the reality is Asia is not monolithic. It's massively diverse and also,  it's quite fragmented and therefore you can't just have a single food format in one market  and make the scale to pay for your technology, pay for your digital execution and pay for  your cost of operations in back office.

[00:05:45]So, it makes your job a lot harder.

[00:05:47]It makes it more interesting, I wouldn't call it  harder, but I am really pleased with the progress.

[00:05:52]You know, we have 20 million customers a  week that come through our stores. And I like to always tell the team, there  is never a perfect day in retail, somewhere a customer was disappointed. So, we  constantly have to be focused on how we improve.

[00:06:06]Health and beauty is now DFI's strongest  business. With more than 1,500 stores across Asia, from Guardian in Southeast  Asia to Mannings in Southern China, CEO Scott Price's challenge is staying  ahead of changing consumer habits.

[00:06:24]I joined him at one store in Hong Kong  to see how the company is adapting.

[00:06:29]So over the last 2 years, we pivoted from  commodities that you can buy everywhere like shampoos etc, to really functional  value and it's this trend of wellness, people want to invest, even though  they're careful with their dollars, they want to invest in wellness.  They want to feel better.

[00:06:44]To tap into that trend, Mannings is testing a new  concept in Hong Kong, the Chinese Wellness Hub.

[00:06:52]Here, customers can consult traditional  Chinese medicine practitioners or step into a health pod, where basic health  indicators can be measured in minutes.

[00:07:02]Blending traditional practices with modern retail, it's not just about prevention  anymore, but insight.

[00:07:10]This wellness pivot, how much is  it about getting that data? Is data collection now becoming  a core asset of the company?

[00:07:16]The way you protect the bottom line  for shareholders is you create your own digital revenue that has a higher margin. Data is the core to that. Data is to me the future of retail brick-and-mortar  becoming an omnichannel player.

[00:07:29]So, you have to have not only the data, but  you have to monetize the data with customers.

[00:07:33]Have you been able to monetize the data?

[00:07:34]We have. We have. We've started that process.  We're being able to sell insights to vendors and importantly, customers are giving us  permission to sell more products to them, so we capture a greater share of wallet.

[00:07:45]To scale that effort, DFI is leaning  on AI and its Yuu loyalty platform, using shopper data to sharpen  merchandising and drive spending.

[00:07:56]When you invest in AI, is it about  cost cutting or creating new business?

[00:08:00]So, there are three areas that we look at. First  off is personalization. The second area is just around cost management. The third area is really  around running a better business. For a shopper like yourself, Christine, if you were to go to  the shampoo aisle in a Guardian store in Singapore and you were to stand there, you're looking at  it trying to decide, okay, which one do I buy?

[00:08:19]There's a massive amount of thinking and logic and decision-making decision-making, that goes into that,  and it relies upon the experience of an individual. The more we're able to use AI  to help that person make better decisions, one, it helps the customer, but two, it improves  our overall margin and therefore profitability.

[00:08:40]Is your investment in AI paying off?

[00:08:42]It is.

[00:08:43]What does the future look like? Will AI  become your margin story or your growth story?

[00:08:48]Both. I think it has to be both. The one  thing that probably keeps me up at night a little bit on this AI, is disrupting  the traditional approach to digital. So, Agentic AI and creating a personal assistant,  the idea that an individual will have a relationship with an agentic personal  assistant that says, "Look, I need eggs.

[00:09:12]I want an appointment with the dentist and can  you make sure there's a car ready to pick up the kids at 9:00 a.m." And the reality is  that basically disrupts the relationship that each one of those service providers has  with customers today. With that goes loyalty, with that goes access to data. So, there is going  to be this arms race for retailers to understand in that agentic world, how do you ensure you  maintain that relationship with the customer.

[00:09:40]And will you be leading that race?

[00:09:41]We're going to try really hard.

[00:09:43]You're hopeful.

[00:09:44]I am hopeful.

[00:09:45]You’re still operating about  one thousand 7-Eleven stores, We are.

[00:09:48]in the mainland. Is China still  strategically an important market for DFI?

[00:09:53]It is. And, I think that as long as you've got the  right proposition with the right price and value, you know if you go back five, seven years before  Covid, and you look at what was the reasonable value that somebody was willing to pay for  a breakfast, it's now discounted by 60%. So, we're winning, for example, in the  breakfast occasion. We're now, near- That specific?

[00:10:17]We now have probably 50,000, Guangdong only,  this is Shenzhen and Guangzhou for the most part, only at this point, with those 1000 stores.  50,000 morning daily orders of click and collect where people go online as they get on  the train, the bus, etc, they pay renminbi 990 and they come pick up their coffee and their  bun at the 7-Eleven on their way to the office.

[00:10:38]That's a service that wouldn't have really been  material or meaningful five, seven years ago.

[00:10:43]It sounds like you know your  Chinese consumer very well.

[00:10:45]You have to, to be able to maintain  those number of stores profitably.

[00:10:49]Sustainability is another critical challenge for  DFI. It’s targeting a 50% cut in emissions by 2030, and net zero by 2050. The toughest work?  Not in stores, but deep in the supply chain.

[00:11:04]The hardest area to do this, and we're not alone  in this, is agricultural commodities. For example, this is Asia. Rice is our biggest carbon  footprint, and most people don't understand that the high level of water that is used in  rice creates an enormous carbon footprint. So, we've actually worked in Thailand to create a  very low carbon by creating through, in essence, basic technology, a low water use of rice,  and we now sell that in our stores. So, we're focused for that scope three, that  net zero by 2050, areas around coffee, rice, beef and pork. Those are areas where we can bring  technology in ways to be able to bend the curve, but we do that in a way that's low cost because  our customers won't pay a penny more. Therefore, we're able to do that and bring back to them,  great, sustainable products at the same price.

[00:11:57]What do you see as your biggest  execution risk in your net zero journey?

[00:12:01]The fragmented agricultural markets  of Asia. If you're dealing with a very large-scale agricultural entity in the  United States or Australia or Germany, they have the wherewithal and the  money to invest in the technology.

[00:12:17]This is Asia, Southeast Asia markets where you  still have high levels of emerging middle class, very small farms, they don't have the  technology. So, I think the challenge is that governments need to step up and  help in this journey. We can't afford as a single retailer to do that on our own. How has Asia shaped the way you lead as a CEO?

[00:12:39]Early in my career, one of the mistakes  that I made because of the complexity Asia, was I mistook English fluency for business savvy.

[00:12:49]You mistook English fluency?

[00:12:51]Yes, because very fluent people can appear  smart. And what I understood was some of the more reticent in English were actually the  smartest business-people in the room. And so for me that is one of the important things in  in Asia is that each market is competitively different and English language should not be  confused with the ability to make progress.

[00:13:14]The second is there is no Asia. The economies  even in North Asia between Japan in China in Hong Kong and Korea are wildly different, let  alone comparing them to Indonesia or Vietnam. So, how do you create scale across very different  cultures and very different economies is what I think it makes Asia so unique and  for me a lot of fun to do business in.

[00:13:36]So, at this stage of your career, Scott, what matters most to you? Is it  growth, resilience, or impact?

[00:13:44]Well, I would say I'm at the sunset of my career  because I've tried to retire, failed miraculously.

[00:13:51]When your wife tells you to go get a job, that  tells you you probably have retired too early.

[00:13:55]So, this being my last job, what's important  for me is leaving behind a team-member legacy of individuals who have felt like they  have not only served a purpose but also bettered themselves. And you know it's no  longer, it doesn't have to be about me, I have no more career aspirations, and  that is freeing in the sense that there isn't a next job that I'm trying to work  towards with my own personal ambition.

[00:14:21]I'm done with that, and there is a lot of then  almost sense of personal purpose that says I want to create the best possible team members  that I can during this last period of my career.

[00:14:37]So, it's all about impact.

[00:14:38]Yes. I guess that's a good way to put it.

[00:14:41]Scott, thank you so much for talking to me.

[00:14:43]Thank you.