The Philippines’ leading home improvement and finishing construction supplies retailer, Wilcon Depot Inc., is planning to open eight to 10 stores this year as it begins to see signs of market recovery.
In an interview on the sidelines of the Shareholders’ Association of the Philippines (SharePHIL) general membership meeting on March 19, Wilcon Depot President and CEO Lorraine Belo-Cincochan said there would be a mix of small, medium, and large store formats.
She added that most of these will be in Luzon but outside of Metro Manila. A new small-format branch will open in Cubao, Quezon City, on March 28, although they are also slated to open another store in Cebu in the second quarter of this year.
Since Wilcon has already reached its 100-store target, Belo-Cincochan said they will now shift their focus to renovations since there is less pressure to ramp up expansion to new areas.
“We want to focus on the renovation of our existing stores so sales will catch up with that of the new stores. So there is a slight deviation in our focus,” she noted.
After seeing sales decline last year due to high commodity prices, Wilcon hopes for a recovery in 2025 as inflation eases.
In a previous interview with reporters, Wilcon Senior Executive Vice President and COO Rosemarie B. Ong said that while there are external factors they cannot control, they have high hopes that public consumption will improve this year.
“It’s [Wilcon’s outlook] always positive. We have nowhere to go but to really grow and grow and grow. But we see some improvements in all the headwinds that have been happening in the past year. So hopefully, this year will be a better year for us,” Ong said.
She said the company will continue to expand its stores in areas where it is not currently present and that it is now moving out of city centers, where stores may be smaller.
“Our focus is to really renovate [older stores], to be more adaptive to the business. How we can make their shopping experience more seamless, more convenient and more comfortable,” she said.
Wilcon is already 48 years old, and the company’s stores were getting older, with many things to fix in these stores, which contribute almost all of the company’s revenues, she added.