WinMart Brand Guidelines: Vingroup’s 2014 VinMart, Masan’s 2019 Deal & the 2022 Rename

A Vingroup chain of supermarkets and corner stores.

WinMart began life under another name. The Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup established the VinMart supermarkets and the smaller VinMart+ convenience stores in November 2014, VnExpress International reported in December 2019; Vietnamese Wikipedia gives the opening date as 20 November 2014. The operating company was VinCommerce, which also owned the shopping website Adayroi.

The chain grew quickly, partly by buying rivals. In 2018 VinCommerce took over 23 Fivimart supermarkets, and in 2019 it added 87 Shop&Go convenience stores, VnExpress International reported. Vietnamese Wikipedia says the Fivimart purchase came in October 2018, that Fivimart had traded for more than ten years, and that its stores were merged into VinMart.

By May 2019, Vietnamese Wikipedia says, VinMart had about 111 supermarkets and more than 1,800 VinMart+ stores in nearly 50 provinces and cities, with more than 11,000 staff. The same article lists the range as fresh and prepared food, clothing, cosmetics, household goods, stationery and toys. A VnExpress International photograph from December 2019 shows a VinMart supermarket in Hanoi stocked with Masan products, a hint of the deal that was about to change the chain’s owner.

The two store sizes set the shape the business still has. VinMart meant a full supermarket; VinMart+ meant a neighbourhood shop, the format that made up most of the outlets in each of the counts cited in this guide.

From Vingroup to Masan.

On 3 December 2019 Vingroup and Masan Group said they had agreed to merge three businesses — VinCommerce, Vingroup’s farming unit VinEco and Masan Consumer Corporation — into a new company that Masan would operate, VnExpress International reported. The new company was to control more than 2,600 supermarkets and convenience stores in 50 provinces, as well as 14 VinEco farms. English Wikipedia says Masan acquired a controlling stake in VinCommerce in December 2019, and Tuoi Tre News described Masan in April 2021 as having acquired the brands from Vingroup “over a year ago.”

The new name came in two steps. At Masan’s shareholders’ meeting on 1 April 2021, its chief executive announced that VinMart and VinMart+ would become WinMart and WinMart+, Tuoi Tre News reported the next day. Shoppers had already noticed VinEco vegetables relabelled WinEco, still in red, and Masan said the changes to the brand identity would be small, while the quality, goods and services would be different. At that point the chain had 123 supermarkets and nearly 3,000 VinMart+ stores, the paper said.

The formal switch followed on 15 January 2022. That day WinCommerce, a member of Masan Group, held a ceremony in Vinh City, in Nghệ An province, to announce the change of name, and opened its first WinMart supermarket combining a Phuc Long drinks counter and the Reddi mobile network, Viet Nam News reported. The paper also described a “mini-mall” format grouping a WinMart+ store with a Techcombank branch, a Phuc Long kiosk, a Phano pharmacy and Reddi. Vietnamese Wikipedia dates the official renaming of VinMart and VinMart+ to the same day.

The rename changed one letter. V became W, and the shape of the word stayed recognisable, which matches what Masan said in April 2021 about keeping changes to the identity small.

Vietnam’s grocery shelves.

Southeast Asia’s e-commerce platforms present themselves first through their apps. The home screen of a marketplace carries its name, a run of category icons, banners for the current sale and links to payments, top-ups and delivery services, and that screen does much of the work a shop front once did. Tokopedia, which English Wikipedia says took its name from the Indonesian word for “shop” and the word “encyclopedia,” and Bukalapak, whose name means “open a market stall,” both chose plain Indonesian words that describe what the service does.

Shopping-festival dates and partner programmes carry much of the identity beyond the app. Date-named sales, celebrity brand ambassadors and seasonal campaigns appear on the platforms’ own pages and in the local press; Indonesian Wikipedia records Tokopedia’s ambassadors from 2014 onwards. Programmes for small shops, such as Mitra Tokopedia and Mitra Bukalapak for family-run warungs, take the platform name off the screen and onto counters, signs and receipts.

For Vietnam’s retailers — phone and electronics chains, grocery chains and supermarket groups — the store fascia is a public face alongside the app and the website, and the companies’ corporate pages set out their store formats, sister banners and owners. Store counts and formats in this guide are given only as a dated source reports them.

Corporate pages and the press also carry the ownership story, which in this region often changes the brand itself. Tokopedia merged with Gojek into GoTo in May 2021, TechCrunch reported, and in 2024 it took in TikTok Shop’s Indonesian business, while Bukalapak listed in Jakarta in August 2021 and ended its physical-goods marketplace in early 2025. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — founders, owners, listings and mergers — and says plainly when a fact rests only on the company’s own word.

Three formats under WinCommerce.

Today the chain is run by WinCommerce, which The Investor described in January 2026 as the retail arm and a core subsidiary of Masan Group. Masan is headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City and has been listed on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange since 2009, according to English Wikipedia.

WinCommerce trades under three formats: WinMart supermarkets, WinMart+ convenience stores in both towns and the countryside, and WiN stores, The Investor reported. In December 2025 it opened 161 stores, 131 of them rural WinMart+ shops, 28 urban WinMart+ shops and two WinMart supermarkets. Across 2025 it opened 764 stores, bringing the total to 4,592 at the end of the year, according to the company’s disclosure as reported by the paper. Most of the new openings were in the north (409) and the centre of the country (341), with 14 in the south.

The spread matters for a design system. A WinMart supermarket, a rural WinMart+ shop and a city mini-mall corner share one name but very different floor space, so the identity has to work as large shop signage, on shelf labels and on a small storefront in a provincial town. Masan’s own produce also moved under the same prefix when VinEco became WinEco, so the “Win” name runs from farm packaging to the till.

The history is also a lesson in naming. The chain kept its two-tier structure — VinMart and VinMart+, then WinMart and WinMart+ — through a change of owner, a merger of three companies and a rename, and the plus sign continued to mark the smaller store throughout.

For a design guide, WinMart shows how a retail brand can change hands and change its name while keeping the system that shoppers read on the street. Compare Bách Hóa Xanh, the grocery chain of Mobile World Investment Corporation, and Co.opmart, the supermarket chain of Saigon Co.op. For this guide we use a market red, a leaf green and rice paper with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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