Post by Eugene Chang 🇸🇬

Pang Dong Lai is a supermarket chain founded in Yuchang, a fourth-tier city of Henan that uses human warmth as a strategy to create a most profitable company in their industry. For customers AND employees too. Founder Yu Donglai keeps only 10% equity for himself and makes every management employee a partner. About 50% profit distributed to employees and the rest to shareholders. Not a bad split. The performance gap make you sit up: approx $3.2 Bn in revenue from 13 stores 2025 up 38.71% YoY. In contrast, China’s 2nd largest hypermarket chain Yonghui reported a net loss or RMB1.47B in 2024. Finally, a leadership story from China that is showing us a better way is possible than the accepted “best practices” of extractive organisations. This is a great example that the “employee first, customer second” philosophy is the correct formula. Time to rethink how we are designing our organisations and business model for more sustainable and human led performance.