Robinson Brand Guidelines: A 1979 Siam Square Store, Central’s 1995 Stake and the Robins Name

A Bangkok store that went to the market.

Robinson began in Bangkok in 1979. Thai Wikipedia names its founders as Manit Udomkunnatum and Kamolphan Siriphanporn, trading through Robinson Department Store Public Company Limited, a company later renamed Robinson Public Company Limited, and says the first branch opened at Siam Square. From there it opened stores in Bangkok and in the provinces. English Wikipedia gives the same founding year and describes the chain as positioned as a mid-market retailer.

The company went to the stock market early in its life. Thai Wikipedia dates its listing on the Stock Exchange of Thailand to 3 January 1992, and English Wikipedia gives its ticker as ROBINS. Thai Wikipedia adds that the business then ran into difficulty, which opened the way for Central Group: in 1995, through Central Retail Corporation, Central bought newly issued shares and became the majority shareholder. Central Group’s own timeline also lists the purchase of Robinson in 1995, and English Wikipedia describes the chain as merged with Central Group in that year.

Under Central the two chains were given different jobs. Thai Wikipedia says the group placed Central at the upper-middle and luxury end of the market and Robinson as a value department store within reach of a broad public, and that this positioning let Robinson open branches quickly. In the following year, it says, Central Retail began combining overlapping parts of the two chains, moving home goods, electrical goods, stationery and sports sections into a separate store format called Zen, starting at Seacon Square on Srinakarin.

Provinces, Vietnam and Robinson Lifestyle.

The chain’s growth in the 2010s was followed by the business press. In March 2014 the Bangkok Post reported that Robinson Department Store Plc had 34 department stores in 2013, was concentrating on provincial Thailand, including border provinces, and was opening its first store in Vietnam, in Hanoi, under the shorter name Robins; the paper described the Hanoi store as the company’s first step into the wider ASEAN market. English Wikipedia says that by the end of 2014 the company ran 39 stores in Thailand and two in Vietnam, with more than 450,000 square metres of retail space. The Bangkok Post report also credited the renovation of the Bang Rak store in Bangkok with part of the company’s growth in 2013, and noted that its shares traded on the Stock Exchange of Thailand as ROBINS; English Wikipedia says the stock was a member of the SET50 index.

Alongside the department stores, the company built shopping centres under the Robinson Lifestyle name. Thai Wikipedia dates the opening of Robinson Lifestyle Center to 2010, and English Wikipedia describes the company and its subsidiaries as running department stores under the Robinson brand and shopping centres under the Robinson Lifestyle brand.

The listed company came to an end in 2019 and 2020. Thai Wikipedia says that in 2019 Central Group applied to delist Robinson so that the businesses could be combined, with Central Retail Corporation listed in its place, and that Robinson’s shares were bought through a tender offer and withdrawn from the exchange. The Nation reported on 19 February 2020 that trading in Central Retail Corporation shares on the Stock Exchange of Thailand would begin the next day. Thai Wikipedia says the Robinson department stores then passed to the management of Central Department Store.

How the category presents itself.

Department stores and hypermarkets in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia are usually met inside a larger building. Many sit as anchor tenants in shopping malls, so the store name appears twice: on the fascia above the entrance and again on the mall directory, the car-park signs and the shopping bags carried through the concourse. Some groups also run the malls themselves, which lets one family of names cover both the centre and the store inside it.

The calendar shapes much of what customers see. Retailers in the region publish their own campaigns around Chinese New Year, Hari Raya, Songkran, Deepavali, Christmas and year-end sales, and the store name is often paired with a seasonal theme for a few weeks before returning to its everyday colours. Shopping bags, price tags and in-store signs carry the same palette, so a chain’s colours can be read from across a mall.

Own-label ranges and loyalty programmes extend the name beyond the fascia. Several groups publish house brands for groceries, clothing or homeware, and many describe member cards and apps that collect points across the group’s stores. Store naming is usually plain: a chain name followed by the mall or district, so that a branch is known by its location as much as by its owner.

Corporate pages fill in the rest. Most of these companies set out their founders, founding dates, parent groups and stock-exchange listings on their own investor or corporate sites, and the national business press records acquisitions, renamings and closures as they happen. The guides in this set draw on those dated records and describe each name as its owner and the press present it.

Some stores renamed, the name kept.

Some Robinson stores have since changed their signs. The Bangkok Post reported on 19 June 2020 that Central Retail, which it described as the retail arm of Central Group, had begun realigning the Central and Robinson names to suit the customers at each site, starting at the Megabangna complex, where English Wikipedia now lists a Central store renovated from a Robinson. In November 2024 the Thai business site Brand Inside reported that Robinson Bang Rak, a store on Charoen Krung Road for more than ten years that the site described as small but well connected and easy to reach, had taken down its old signs and become Central Bangrak, with the new name promoted at the front of the building and the interior reworked as a full Central store; Central Department Store told the site it could not yet give details on other branches. English Wikipedia lists former Robinson stores at Fashion Island, Khon Kaen and Udon Thani among those now trading as Central.

The Robinson name has not gone. The Nation reported in December 2024 that Central Department Store Group ran 76 department stores, of which 47 were Robinson branches and 29 were Central. The head of the group told the paper there was no intention of converting every Robinson branch, because Robinson serves a different, more price-conscious customer, and cited areas such as Sukhumvit. As of that report, Robinson traded as the group’s value department store alongside the Central chain, with shopping centres under the Robinson Lifestyle name.

For a design guide, Robinson shows how one owner can run two department store names side by side, each pitched at a different customer, and move a store from one name to the other with a change of signs. Compare Central Department Store, the sister chain that now manages it, and Tops, the supermarket chain from the same retail group. For this guide we use a deep teal, a warm sand and an ink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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