Puregold Brand Guidelines: A 1998 Mandaluyong Hypermarket, S&R and 807 Stores

A hypermarket in Mandaluyong, December 1998.

Puregold is a Philippine supermarket and hypermarket chain. English Wikipedia describes it as trading consumer goods on a wholesale and retail basis. The company says Puregold Price Club, Inc. was incorporated on 8 September 1998 and opened its first Puregold hypermarket in Mandaluyong City in December of that year. English Wikipedia names the founders as Lucio Co and Susan Co, dates the first branch to 12 December 1998, and places it as the anchor tenant of Liberty Center, now Mandala Park, on Shaw Boulevard.

The retail move came from a company with a different trade. English Wikipedia says Lucio Co’s Alcorn Gold Resources Corporation, later renamed Cosco Capital, had worked in oil and mineral exploration before turning to retail around the time of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and it names Cosco Capital as Puregold’s owner. BusinessWorld, in July 2023, described Puregold as one of Lucio L. Co’s listed businesses.

Growth came in stages. The company says it built two more hypermarkets, in Manila and Parañaque, in 2001, when it also launched a loyalty programme that was renamed Tindahan ni Aling Puring in 2004. Between 2002 and 2006 it added about three stores a year and set up in North and South Luzon. A smaller format, Puregold Jr. Supermarket, arrived in the last quarter of 2008, and Puregold Extra followed in 2010, a year in which the company says it ran 62 stores. In 2011 it opened 38 stores, bringing its count to 100, according to the company.

A listing, S&R and a run of regional chains.

The stock market came next. Puregold had meant to list in March 2011 but deferred the offer because of market volatility, The Philippine Star reported in June 2011, adding that the proceeds were meant mainly for store expansion. The paper named BDO Capital & Investment Corp. as domestic lead manager for the share sale and HSBC as international lead manager, and said the offer would account for 36 percent of Puregold’s outstanding stock after the listing. The shares began trading on the Philippine Stock Exchange on 5 October 2011, the same paper reported in February 2012.

Acquisitions widened the formats. In 2012, the company says, it bought a related retailer, Kareila Management Corporation, with six S&R Membership Shopping warehouses; English Wikipedia says the deal was a share swap that made S&R a Puregold subsidiary. In the same year Puregold bought the Gant Group of Companies, known for its Parco supermarkets, with 19 stores, which English Wikipedia says were converted into Puregold branches. In 2013 it acquired Company E Corporation, another supermarket chain, with 15 stores; the company says Company E and the Gant Group later merged into Puregold. S&R also runs quick-service restaurants under the S&R New York Style name.

The buying continued. In June 2023 Puregold’s board approved the acquisition of 14 DiviMart supermarkets in Luzon, BusinessWorld reported. The paper described DiviMart as a supermarket chain with more than 30 branches, selling fresh produce, meat, frozen foods and household goods, and listed the 14 sites in provinces including Bulacan, Bataan, Nueva Ecija, Rizal, Cavite and Laguna, as well as Pasig City and Manila. By the end of March 2023 the group ran 531 stores: 456 Puregold stores, 23 S&R warehouses and 52 S&R New York Style restaurants, the same report said. In July 2023 BusinessWorld reported that the DiviMart stores had been acquired and that the group had 543 stores at the end of June 2023.

English Wikipedia says Puregold introduced the Puregold Mobile app in 2020, offering online delivery, in-store pick-up and self-checkout, and letting its Tindahan ni Aling Puring and other loyalty cards be used digitally.

Design and documentation.

Retailers in Singapore and the Philippines tend to present themselves through the store itself before any campaign. Opening hours, location and the name over the door carry much of the identity: a 24-hour department store in Little India, a supermarket in a public-housing estate, a department store anchoring a mall, or a bookshop whose aisles fill up at the start of each school year. The companies in this guide publish store locators, opening hours and seasonal promotions on their own websites, and those pages show how each one wants to be seen.

Store naming is usually plain. Many of these businesses carry a founder’s name, a family name or the name of a parent group. Some keep a single name across every format; others run several store names under one parent. Where a chain runs several store types, its own pages set out which name goes on which fascia, and those choices are described in each guide as the companies publish them.

Corporate pages add the history. Listed groups publish founders, management, parent companies and stock-exchange listings on their investor and about pages, while family-owned businesses often tell their origin story in their own words: a market stall, a small shop or a single store taken over and renamed. Each guide marks which details come from the company and which from newspapers, trade press, heritage bodies or encyclopaedias, with dates.

This guide covers grocers, department stores, electronics retailers and booksellers across both countries. It sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it, when it listed, and how many stores it ran according to a dated source. Colours and type in each guide are an unofficial interpretation, chosen for this guide, and no logo or store sign is reproduced.

Hundreds of stores, three formats, one name.

Store counts are reported each quarter. As of the end of June 2026, Puregold operated 794 stores nationwide, BusinessWorld reported in August 2026: 688 Puregold stores, 33 S&R Membership Shopping warehouses and 73 S&R New York Style stores. By the end of September 2026 the count stood at 807, the paper reported on 12 November 2026, made up of 700 Puregold outlets, 34 S&R warehouses and 73 S&R New York Style quick-service restaurants. The company’s own business page records the earlier shape of the chain: at the end of 2016 it listed hypermarkets, supermarkets, Puregold Extra stores, a minimart, S&R warehouse clubs and restaurants, plus NE Bodega and Budgetlane stores, across Metro Manila, North and South Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.

Puregold also puts its name on culture. English Wikipedia says the company held the first awards of its CinePanalo Film Festival on 16 March 2024, with full-length films and short films by student directors, shown at Gateway Mall.

The store name runs through the formats. The company uses “Puregold” across its formats, from the full hypermarket to Puregold Jr. and Puregold Extra, while S&R keeps its own warehouse-club name, and the loyalty scheme carries the Tindahan ni Aling Puring name in Filipino. English Wikipedia notes that the company styles its name in capital letters.

For a design guide, Puregold shows how one store name can carry a hypermarket, a smaller supermarket and a loyalty programme, while an acquired chain keeps its own sign. Compare SM Store, the Philippine department-store chain, and Robinsons Retail, another Philippine retail group. For this guide we use a deep green, harvest gold and rice paper with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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