How Chow Tai Fook became one of the biggest gold and jewellery chains in the world
- Chow Tai Fook started out selling gold, transformed the trade with its 999.9 standard, a guarantee of purity, and expanded into diamonds and jewellery
- From a single shop in Macau it has grown to more than operate over 4,000 worldwide, and embraced online sales. Twice it paid record prices for rough diamonds
In the Victoria Dockside development on Hong Kong’s harbourfront are two very different iterations of the Chow Tai Fook brand.
Down in the basement of the K11 Musea mall is one of the jewellery retailer’s many stores – a reassuring, somewhat predictable sight at malls in Hong Kong and across China.
On an upper floor, meanwhile, is a VIP showroom, all airlock doors, sensational harbour views, five-star hotel decor and lavish display cases. It’s an illustration of the range of customers the company welcomes, and a reminder of the journey Chow Tai Fook has made since its humble launch selling a single product.
Chow Tai Fook was founded in 1929 in Guangzhou, in southern China, by Chow Chi-yuen, a native of Shunde, a town 45km (28 miles) to the south of that city; in those days, it operated solely as a goldsmith. In 1938 the company opened its first shop in Macau, then one in Hong Kong the following year.
It was in 1956 that the company really started to expand under the control of Cheng Yu-tung, son-in-law of Chow, who had taken him on as a penniless apprentice. Cheng, who died in 2016, went on to become Hong Kong’s third-richest person.
Cheng was the central figure in the success of the company, transforming Chow Tai Fook from a shop selling bullion and traditional gold accessories to a jewellery retailer in the modern sense, and expanding into a host of other businesses, many of which his companies are still involved in today, including property (New World Development), hotels (in particular the Rosewood group), energy, aviation and urban transit (Citybus and New World First Bus).
