PX Mart Brand Guidelines: Taiwan’s 1998 Welfare-Store Chain, Its Mascots and Mega PX Mart

A public programme that became a private chain.

PX Mart’s Chinese name, 全聯福利中心, still says where it came from: “福利中心” means welfare centre. The Taipei Times summed up the history in November 2015: founded in 1998, the chain PX Mart grew from a government-run grocery chain open only to public-sector workers into a supermarket business open to everyone.

Chinese Wikipedia sets out the steps. On 22 November 1974 the Executive Yuan, Taiwan’s cabinet, issued a plan to supply daily necessities to public employees, and a network of welfare centres was set up, first on a trial basis in Taipei and at Zhongxing New Village in Nantou County, then across the island from July 1975. Shoppers needed a purchase card to enter. In 1989 the arrangement changed: supply for civil servants and teachers passed to employees’ consumer co-operatives, with bulk purchasing handled by the national co-operative league, known in short as 全聯社. The first two characters of that short name, 全聯, became the chain’s name.

Privatisation came in 1998. Chinese Wikipedia says the government ended the co-operative league’s supply contract that year, and in October 1998 Lin Ming-hsiung, founder of the property developer Yuanlih Construction, set up a new company, 全聯實業, which took over the network’s 66 stores and renamed them 全聯福利中心. English Wikipedia gives the same 66 stores and says they were opened to the general public under the PX Mart name.

The company’s English name has varied in the press. The Taipei Times called the operator Chuan Lian Enterprise Co Ltd in 2015, spelling the chain “Pxmart,” and called the same company, 全聯實業, PX Mart Co Ltd by 2021. Chinese Wikipedia dates the company’s formation to 1 October 1998; the founding year, 1998, is consistent across the sources used here.

Acquisitions, formats and RT-Mart.

Growth came largely by acquisition. English Wikipedia lists the stores of a consumer co-operative in 2004, the Taiwanese stores of the Japanese supermarket chain Summit in 2006, and the supermarkets of the Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Corporation in 2007; the Taipei Times put that last purchase at 12 supermarkets. Chinese Wikipedia adds stores taken over from the Obuying chain in 2014. In November 2015 the Taipei Times reported that Wei Chuan Foods’ board had approved the sale of its Matsusei supermarket chain, including the brand, to PX Mart’s operator; Chinese Wikipedia says the deal was completed on 31 December 2015, and Taiwan Business TOPICS, the American Chamber of Commerce magazine, referred to the completed purchase in 2018.

Store counts, as dated sources give them, show the scale. The Taipei Times reported 746 stores in November 2015 and 1,056 outlets in October 2021. Chinese Wikipedia gives 1,250 supermarkets as of 31 December 2025.

Formats multiplied along the way. Chinese Wikipedia records a larger “imart” store in Taipei’s Da’an district in 2012, a smaller PX mini format from 2018, distribution centres at Guanyin in Taoyuan and Gangshan in Kaohsiung from 2012 and at Wuqi in Taichung from 2016, and a payment app, PX Pay, from 2019. The Taipei Times reported a 4,000-ping flagship store in Taipei’s Nangang district in 2021. In 2018 Taiwan Business TOPICS reported that James Hsieh, formerly of the company behind Taiwan’s 7-Eleven stores, had taken charge in July 2017, succeeding Hsu Chung-jen.

The deal that took the company into hypermarkets was RT-Mart. In October 2021 the Taipei Times reported PX Mart’s agreement to buy the hypermarket chain from France’s Auchan and Taiwan’s Ruentex Group. PX Mart acquired 95.97 per cent of RT-Mart’s shares in December 2021, and on 15 July 2022 the Fair Trade Commission approved the merger with conditions, including a requirement to give suppliers shelf space without charge for at least three years, the paper reported. RT-Mart kept its own name at first; Chinese Wikipedia says it was folded into PX Mart on 1 August 2025 and renamed 大全聯, and the Taipei Times referred to the former RT-Mart stores as Mega PX Mart in June 2026.

Design and documentation.

Supermarket chains in the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and the United States present themselves through a small set of fixed things: the name on the store sign, the colours of the fascia and the carrier bag, the layout of the shop floor and the names of their own-label ranges. These are the parts of a grocery identity that shoppers meet every week, and they are the parts this guide describes.

Names often carry a group with them. In the Philippines, SM Supermarket and SM Hypermarket put the initials of the SM Group ahead of a plain descriptive word, and the SM Bonus own label repeats the same two letters, while Savemore, a third format in the same family, has a name of its own. Elsewhere, a chain may keep a founder’s name, a place name or an English word written in a local script, and this guide gives each as the company or a dated source shows it.

Ownership takes several forms. Some chains belong to listed retail groups or family conglomerates with interests far beyond food; others are run as co-operatives owned by their store operators, or as businesses owned by their employees. Where a chain has changed hands, merged or been demerged, this guide gives the owner and the date from a dated source, and describes any deal not completed as pending.

Store formats, networks and own-label ranges are given in the companies’ own terms and with their dates, because networks change quickly and a store count is only true on the day it was published. Founders, owners and retail groups are named as corporate pages and the press record them. Colours and typefaces are treated as an unofficial interpretation unless a source documents them, and no sign, logo or package is reproduced.

A deadpan spokesman and a bear.

PX Mart’s brand voice is unusually dry. English Wikipedia says that in 2006 the chain launched a long-running advertising campaign known as “Mister PX Mart” (全聯先生), in which a man speaking in a deadpan voice explains what the chain leaves out of its stores. The campaign made a plain, unadorned manner part of the brand itself, which suits a chain whose name still says “welfare centre.”

Characters came later. Chinese Wikipedia says the chain introduced its first mascot, 福利熊, the Welfare Bear, on 29 January 2015, and in 2020 added a team of fruit characters, the Fruit Adventure Squad, built around apples, kiwi fruit and bananas drawn as dogs. The Chinese and English names run side by side: 全聯 in Chinese, PX Mart in Latin letters, and now 大全聯 and Mega PX Mart for the hypermarkets.

Some names are easy to confuse. PX Mart’s operator has been called both Chuan Lian Enterprise and PX Mart Co Ltd in English, for the same Chinese company name. RT-Mart’s former stores in Taiwan now trade as Mega PX Mart. The chain’s website is pxmart.com.tw. Its logo, typeface and colours are not documented in the sources used here, so the palette in this guide is our own.

For a design guide, PX Mart shows how a chain can carry a public-service origin into a private brand through its name, and then give that brand a voice with a deadpan spokesman and a bear. Compare Sheng Siong, a Singapore supermarket chain founded by three brothers, and AEON, the Japanese retail group. For this guide we use an ink blue, a pale sky and a market amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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