AS Watson was established in 1841 in Hong Kong, the year the British took over the territory. Almost 185 years later, the brand is now a health and beauty retail giant, with close to 17,000 outlets across 31 markets, including mainland China, Malaysia, the UK, Turkey and even Ukraine.
“We are a people company,” Malina Ngai, group CEO of AS Watson, said at the Fortune Innovation Forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Monday. Ngai acknowleged the company’s long history–including how the company endowed Sun Yat-sen, who later led the 1911 revolution against the Qing dynasty, with a medical scolarship–yet argued that AS Watson had to remain forward-thinking.
