Gome Brand Guidelines: A 1987 Beijing Electronics Shop, a 1993 Name and a Long Contraction

Fans, televisions and radios, then a single name.

Gome started as one small shop in Beijing. Yicai Global wrote in October 2023 that the company was founded by Huang Guangyu in 1987 and began as a small electronics store in the capital; English Wikipedia gives the same founder, city and year. Chinese Wikipedia dates the first electrical-appliance shop to 1 January 1987, and says it began by selling Chinese-made electric fans, televisions and radios before building its reputation on imported Japanese appliances. In the 1990s, the same source says, the business set up its own production for some appliances; as Chinese makers multiplied and improved, Chinese brands again filled most of its shelves.

The name came six years in. English Wikipedia says the brand name GOME was first adopted in 1993, and Chinese Wikipedia says that in that year all of the company’s shops were brought under the single name Gome Electrical Appliances, written 国美电器 in Chinese, and run on a chain model. In 1998 the company drew its years of experience together in a written operating manual for its stores, Chinese Wikipedia says.

Expansion outside the capital came at the end of the decade. Chinese Wikipedia says Gome opened its first chain store beyond Beijing in Tianjin in July 1999, as the start of a national chain strategy; English Wikipedia likewise dates its growth into other Chinese cities from 1999. In October 2000 it held a large competitive purchasing tender for colour televisions, which Chinese Wikipedia says economists described at the time as a revival of “commercial capital.”

A Hong Kong listing and three store names.

The 2000s took Gome to Hong Kong and to scale. Chinese Wikipedia says it opened a flagship store in Hong Kong in November 2003 and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in August 2004; English Wikipedia also dates the listing to 2004 and notes that the holding company is incorporated in Bermuda. In November 2006 Gome completed a merger with the rival chain Yongle, whose shares left the Hong Kong main board in January 2007, and in December 2007 it took over the management of the Beijing chain Dazhong. Chinese Wikipedia says the Gome, Dazhong and Yongle names then sat side by side as three retail brands of one group. As of 2010, English Wikipedia says, Gome had 826 stores across mainland China.

Hong Kong did not last. Chinese Wikipedia says the chain had about 20 stores there at its peak, and closed its last six between 1 February and 16 March 2013, citing high rents and weak trade; English Wikipedia says the company stayed in Hong Kong as a wholesaler.

Online selling became the other half of the name. Chinese Wikipedia says the Gome online mall relaunched in April 2011, and that from 12 September 2017 store loyalty points were replaced by the online currency Meidou, at 100 Meidou for each old point, which some shoppers objected to. The listed company renamed itself Gome Retail in 2017, dropping the words “electrical appliances.” In April 2019 it agreed a shop-in-shop partnership with Carrefour China covering more than 200 stores. On 23 January 2021 Gome launched an e-commerce platform called Zhenkuaile, “really happy”; on 10 January 2023, Chinese Wikipedia says, the app was renamed the Gome App, bringing the Gome name back to the platform.

How Chinese retailers and platforms present themselves.

Chinese retailers and e-commerce platforms present themselves across a wide range of surfaces at once. A single group may run hypermarkets, appliance showrooms, shopping malls, small franchised shops and a shopping app, and each has to carry the same name at very different sizes, from a rooftop sign on a city-centre store to a small icon on a phone. Many of these companies grew from one shop or one website into groups with several store formats, so their names often began with one product category and later had to stretch to cover many.

Naming is often plain and descriptive. Store and company names commonly pair a short brand word with a description of what is sold, such as electrical appliances, and later drop that description as the business widens. Platform names and company names can swap places: a group may rename itself after its own website or app, or give an app a new name and later return to the original one. Chinese characters and an English or pinyin form usually appear side by side, and the two do not always translate each other.

Shopping festivals shape much of the visual calendar. Dates such as 11 November, known as Double Eleven, bring campaign artwork across store windows, app home screens and delivery packaging, usually set around the date itself and the company’s own name. For a designer, the useful material is how the companies publish these campaigns and how the core name holds steady while the seasonal graphics change around it.

Corporate pages fill in the rest. Listed retailers publish their founders, owners and exchange listings in annual results and announcements, and these records also show renamings, store closures and changes of control as dated facts. Read together with independent press, they give a fuller picture of how each name has been used over time.

Closed shops, debt talks and a Hong Kong listing.

The contraction began in 2022. Yicai Global reported on 19 October 2023 that Gome had been closing shops to cut costs since its cash problems worsened the year before. Responding to a report that it had shut every store in Guangdong, the company said that at the end of September 2023 it had two self-operated stores and 107 franchised outlets in the province, against 14 and 181 at the end of June. Chinese Wikipedia adds that all of Gome’s physical stores in Xi’an closed in mid-April 2023, that a petition to wind up a Gome subsidiary was dismissed on 7 February 2023, and that in September 2023 the electrical-appliance business was split into two separately run regional companies, called Zone A and Zone B, with the Gome App and its logistics arm run more independently.

The company’s own filings describe the scale of the problem. In its annual results for 2024, published on the Hong Kong exchange’s website on 31 March 2025, GOME Retail Holdings said it remained listed in Hong Kong and ran retail stores and an online sales network for electrical appliances, consumer electronics and general merchandise in mainland China. It reported a material uncertainty over its ability to continue as a going concern, said most of its bank and other borrowings were in default or cross-default and that some major suppliers had stopped supplying it. It described a shift toward franchise and quasi-franchise stores and automotive experience centres. Its auditor issued a disclaimer of opinion on the 2024 accounts. As of March 2025, according to that filing, its shares were listed in Hong Kong and the group was still operating stores and online sales.

For a design guide, Gome shows how one name, chosen in 1993 to unite a group of Beijing shops, can outlast the stores themselves, returning in 2023 as the name of an app after a brief detour through a playful platform brand. Compare Suning, the Nanjing appliance retailer that rose alongside it, and Alibaba, whose platforms reshaped the market both chains sold into. For this guide we use a shopfront red, charcoal, rice paper and brass with a book serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Gome’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.