A SURPLUS store with a 30-year presence in Luzon is setting up shop in Cebu.
Sharlene Carman-Powell, HMR Group marketing head, said last Saturday that Cebu’s robust economy and the increasing demand among Cebuano customers for low-priced general merchandise piqued the company’s interest to penetrate the Cebu market once again.
Carman-Powell was referring to last Saturday’s opening of the HMR Haus, which is a store inside SM Hypermart in Barangay Subangdaku, Mandaue City.
This is the firm’s first store outside of Luzon and their 16th branch in the country.
“With the ever expanding economy of Cebu as a business hub in the Visayas, it opens up opportunities for us to extend HMR’s products and services for customers here,” said Carman-Powell.
Carman-Powell said that in a way, the opening of the new HMR Store Haus is the store’s return to Cebu.
She said that HMR Group had a Save on Surplus (SOS) store across the Basilica Minore Del Sto. Niño, a smaller format of the present HMR Trading Haus, seven years ago.
She said they stopped the SOS operation to focus on the their expansion in Luzon at that time.
The new 3,600 sq.m. store houses a wide variety of surplus products, which are mostly over-runs or shelf pulls from leading retail outlets in the USA, Australia, Europe, and Southeast Asia such as KMart, WalMart, Costco and Target.