By Violet Li
Enthusiastic shoppers, an overwhelming turnout, hours of queues, fighting and verbal abuse, vandalism, a police callout, and an early shutdown marked the grand opening of Australia’s first Panda Mart in Cranbourne last weekend.
International discount retailer Panda Mart opened its first store Australia-wide in Cranbourne on Thursday 27 February, with a 20 per cent discount being offered on the first four days.
When Star News visited on the afternoon of Saturday 1 March, customers queued deep, with the line extending from the front of the store to Bunnings next door.
Carparks were full to their capacity as plenty of drivers hung around to try their luck. The surrounding neighbourhood was also packed with cars on nature strips and kerbsides, with traffic congestion on Thompsons Road.
Shoppers were seen going home with full trolleys and red shopping bags with the panda logo.
A South East resident, who visited relatives in Cranbourne on the day, said it was shambolic, chaotic, and out-of-control as people “happily” carried their ladened bags with cheap stuff away from the store and more poured in.
“Where was the permit for this grand opening that insisted on traffic management?” she said.
Store owner John Chen estimated that more than 10,000 shoppers showed up each day during the weekend, which was beyond his expectations. He and his team only expected less than one-fifth of the actual turnout.
The situation went out of control in the late afternoon on Saturday.
On the inside, shoppers became agitated while waiting for about one hour and a half on average to check out.
“We opened 18 checkout machines, and there are two people on each machine, one is the cashier, and the other is helping with bagging. It was not as fast as the shoppers expected, so many people queued for a long time,” Mr Chen said.
Some shoppers attempted to jump the queue. Verbal abuse started and escalated into physical fights.
Mr Chen said the staff tried to break up the fight, but one was stopped, and the other kicked off. He also noted that some young people took advantage of the chaos by smashing goods onto the ground and tearing apart the packages.
On the outside, the massive crowd wanted to get in all at once, but the staff shut down the door due to the fights and overcrowding inside.
Eager shoppers swarmed all over the small space between the two rows of glass doors at the entrance. People were pushing on the glass doors to get inside.
Mr Chen said they tried to manage the flow by putting on crowd-control officers, but it didn’t work.
He understood that many people drove hours to have a look and didn’t want to go home with their hands empty, but they had to tell them to go home as the safety concerns loomed.
A large part of the crowd refused. They kept putting their weight on the glass doors.
Police were called and arrived around 5pm to manage the safety and the order. The store was then shut down early for the day.
The store later apologised on Facebook for the inconvenience.
“We apologise for the recent crowding in our store, which may have impacted your shopping experience,” it states.
“To improve safety and comfort, we’re actively managing customer flow by increasing staff, implementing crowd control, and streamlining checkout.
“Thank you for your patience and continued support as we work to provide a better shopping experience.”
Mr Chen said the early shutdown was a hard decision to make.
“We had to do it for everyone’s safety because we were afraid that the fights inside would affect the people lining up next to them, and then there would be more and more fights,” he said.
“More people would be involved in the chaos, and we were concerned about the possibility of a stampede.
“That’s why we decided to shut the door.”
Mr Chen said they implemented crowd-control in the early morning of Sunday 2 March. The queue popped up even before 8am.
“We let 10 people in at a time. There were hundreds of shoppers inside,” he said.
“The average waiting time to get inside was about one hour and a half.
“We also put on four security guards.”
Panda Mart has put Cranbourne town on the map on China’s RedNote, a social media platform used widely by Chinese living overseas. The Chinese community hailed the discount store as “Melbourne’s Yiwu”. Yiwu, a city in the eastern part of China, is widely recognised as the world’s largest wholesale market for small commodities.
The discount store also went viral on TikTok.
