---
title: "How Bila Bila Mart Beats the Giants"
description: "Bila Bila Mart grew from one store to 130 in six years by sitting in a gap the giants ignored. Inside its margins, its listing-fee trick and its plan to list."
url: "https://www.mrmoneytv.com/articles/bila-bila-mart-beats-retail-giants/"
category: "Investing & Market"
author: "Frankie Lim"
published: 2026-07-02
source: "Mr Money TV"
---
# How Bila Bila Mart Beats the Giants
Bila Bila Mart grew from one store to 130 in six years by sitting in a gap the giants ignored. Inside its margins, its listing-fee trick and its plan to list.
## Key takeaways
- Bila Bila Mart opened its first store on 16 March 2020, two days before Malaysia's MCO lockdown, on about RM500,000 of its three founders' personal savings. By 2026 it runs 130 stores across the Peninsula and turns over roughly RM150 million a year, close to RM1 million per store.
- The chain sits in the gap between a convenience store and a supermarket, pricing above a grocer but below a 7-Eleven, and runs gross margins of about 28 to 30 percent instead of the roughly 40 percent a typical convenience store charges.
- Retail revenue splits into front margin (the markup on goods sold) and back margin (listing fees, rebates, display and marketing charges paid by suppliers). Bila Bila earns roughly three times more front margin than back margin, and back margin is still under 10 percent of the mix.
- Waiving upfront listing fees for small local brands is the chain's main differentiator, handing online-only Malaysian brands shelf space while the big FMCG names still pay the back-margin fees that fund the model.
- The real moat is hyper-local assortment. From about 7,000 active SKUs, each store stocks only 2,000 to 3,000, chosen by the neighbourhood's demographics, income and whether it is residential or tourist, so no two clusters carry the same shelf.
- Backed by property developer Exsim, Bila Bila is working toward a Bursa Malaysia listing in two to three years at a target of 300 stores, already preparing SC-compliant SOPs, independent directors and a certificate of fitness for every store.
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A neighbourhood mini-mart has no business beating 7-Eleven at convenience or a hypermarket on price. [Bila Bila Mart](https://www.bilabila.co/) does a version of both, from a spot on the shelf that everyone bigger left empty.
Lee Hui Jing, co-founder and CEO of Bila Bila Mart.
The chain opened its first store on 16 March 2020. Two days later the country locked down, and the shop that was meant to sell Malaysian street food to foodies was staring at a RM16,000 monthly rent and less than RM1,000 in daily sales. Six years later there are 130 stores across the Peninsula, turning over about RM150 million a year. Co-founder Lee Hui Jing runs it as CEO alongside two friends from banking, on roughly half a million ringgit of their own savings put in at the start. Surviving the lockdown was the hard part at the time. The more useful question now is how a chain this small out-manoeuvres companies many times its size.
## 1. The gap between 7-Eleven and the supermarket
Think about how you actually shop. When you want something fast you pull into a convenience store and grab it. When you need real groceries you plan a trip and drive to a supermarket. Almost nothing sits comfortably in the middle, where you want a bit more than a chocolate bar but a lot less than a full trolley.
That middle is where Bila Bila parked itself. It calls the format a convenience grocer: longer opening hours like a convenience store, from 7am to as late as 2am at some outlets, but with fresh vegetables, fruit, frozen seafood and everyday groceries on the shelves.
Oddly, the gap found the business rather than the reverse. The original plan was a destination for Malaysian food, the local answer to the Japanese-themed stores people were queuing for. Then MCO shut everything two days in. What kept the lights on was social media: the new store still had face masks and sanitiser when the pharmacies had run dry, so customers started sending DMs. Those same customers then asked whether the shop could also get them onion, potatoes, kicap, the plain things a kedai runcit sells. The demand pointed straight at the gap, and the team pivoted into it.
## 2. Priced in the middle, on purpose
Sitting in that gap only works if the price sits there too. Bila Bila deliberately marks items higher than a supermarket but lower than a convenience store, and runs gross margins of about 28 to 30 percent. Suppliers regularly ask why it does not just charge the roughly 40 percent a convenience store would. The answer is partly principle and partly strategy: 40 percent is too steep for a shopper who can see a cheaper bottle of milk elsewhere, and the whole point is to give people a reason to walk in.
Some categories barely make money at all. Bread carries something like a 15 percent margin, which is below the cost of running the store, so every extra loaf sold is a small loss. It stays on the shelf because a slightly cheaper loaf, kept fresh, pulls shoppers in for the higher-margin basket around it.
## 3. The listing fee they refuse to charge
In retail, brands usually pay a listing fee just to get onto the shelf. Bila Bila does not charge small local brands one, and that choice defines the range. Plenty of Malaysian brands that only ever had an online presence get their first real shelf space here, which gives the chain a range you cannot find in a cookie-cutter convenience store.
Waiving the fee is not the same as giving everything away. Early on the founders waived every charge for small brands and watched some of them coast, treated like a child handed pocket money for doing nothing. So the chain kept the listing fee off but started charging the other things that force a supplier to stay invested: outlet-opening charges, display and marketing fees, sampling costs. Once a brand is paying for display, marketing and sampling, it has a reason to keep pushing its own product rather than letting it sit on a shelf it got for nothing.
## 4. Front margin, back margin, and where the money really is
Retailers earn in two places. Front margin is the profit on the price difference between buying and selling. Back margin is the money suppliers pay to be stocked at all: listing fees, rebates, bulk discounts, display and marketing charges. The founders came from banking, not retail, and did not even know back margin existed at first. They only pieced it together after reading the IPO prospectus of a listed competitor.
For now, Bila Bila leans on front margin. The split runs at roughly three to one, three parts front margin for every one part back. Back margin is still under 10 percent of the mix, though it climbs as the chain grows, because crossing 100 stores means buying in bigger volumes and negotiating harder with the big FMCG names. That is the part that scales. The giants lean far more on back margin, but they only got there by reaching a size Bila Bila is now approaching.
## 5. Stocking by postcode
Bila Bila carries about 7,000 active SKUs across the business, but any single store stocks only 2,000 to 3,000 of them, chosen for that specific neighbourhood. This is the part rivals find hardest to copy.
A residential outlet gets loaded with groceries. A tourist location leans into ready-to-eat, ready-to-drink and souvenir-style items like local coffee. The buying goes deeper than that, down to who lives on the street: a Chinese-majority area, a Malay-majority one, or one with a lot of newer arrivals from China, each gets a different shelf. Income matters too, because a household in Kepong and one in Taman Tun shop very differently even if both are Chinese. Some Chinese-majority locations even carry non-halal lines and fresh frozen poultry. In pockets with young families, the store stocks baby snacks with no added sugar or salt, the kind a parent struggles to find nearby.
To keep it manageable, outlets with similar customers are clustered so a group of 15 shops might share one assortment. Store size complicates it further: two branches in the same township, one at 1,500 square feet and one at 300, end up carrying different ranges, and the small one may drop fresh entirely for lack of space. The category team pushed back on all the extra work, but that work is what makes two Bila Bila stores feel like two different shops, each built for the people who live around it.
## 6. The Exsim bet and the road to a listing
The chain's investor is [Exsim](https://exsim.com.my/), a property developer, which sounds like a strange match until you look at how Malaysians now live. Housing has gone vertical. A row of terraces almost always had a kedai runcit or two serving it; a cluster of condo towers holds just as many households stacked upward, and it needs the same convenience at the base. Putting a Bila Bila on the ground floor helps a developer sell the lifestyle around its units. The relationship is not exclusive, though. Fewer than 20 of the 130 stores sit in Exsim buildings, and the chain happily works with other landlords.
Money has come from a mix of sources. Bila Bila was profitable about 18 months in, helped by low overheads, careful site selection and, oddly, the pandemic. Since then it has funded growth from its own profits, bank loans, capex financing, and rounds where the investor lent money back at interest or put up personal guarantees so banks would extend more. There were rough patches paying suppliers on time along the way, a reputation the team admits it had to repair.
The destination has been clear from the start. Exsim came in with a listing in mind, and every process the company builds now, from standard operating procedures to independent directors to a certificate of fitness for each store, is being set up to satisfy the Securities Commission. The stated timeline is two to three years, at a target of 300 stores. Expansion runs to Penang, where there are already eight outlets, then south, with room the founders still see left in the Klang Valley. There are around 500 staff on the payroll heading toward 600, which is the number Lee says actually keeps her up at night. She was also told, more than once and to her face, that a woman should quit and let her husband provide. She kept going, and the chain now runs 130 stores.
## What to actually do with this
You do not need to open a store to take something from how this was built:
- Look for the gap instead of the fight. Bila Bila never tried to out-convenience 7-Eleven or undercut a hypermarket. It found the space between them that nobody was serving and priced itself there.
- Know your two margins. If you sell anything through a middleman, understand where you earn on the markup versus what you can charge suppliers to be stocked, because they behave very differently as you scale.
- Curate for the customer in front of you. Running one identical shelf everywhere is easy. Matching what you stock to who actually walks in is harder to run and much harder to copy.
- If you are watching the sector, look at the model, not the store count. A retail chain heading for Bursa lives or dies on real store-level economics. Ask how each store actually makes money before the listing pitch arrives.
None of this makes Bila Bila a sure thing. Its front margins are thinner than the giants', a listing is still years out, and 300 stores is a long way from 130. Still, the chain is proof that size is not the only edge in retail. A smaller player that knows its neighbourhoods and knows exactly where its money comes from can hold a space the big names walked past.
## Frequently asked questions
### What is Bila Bila Mart?
Bila Bila Mart is a fast-growing Malaysian retail chain that calls itself a 'convenience grocer'. It sits between a convenience store and a supermarket, stocking fresh produce, groceries and a large range of small local brands. It opened its first store in March 2020 and has grown to 130 stores across Peninsular Malaysia.
### How does Bila Bila Mart make money if it waives listing fees?
It waives only the upfront listing fee, and only for small local brands. Most revenue comes from front margin, the markup on the goods it sells, which runs around 28 to 30 percent. On top FMCG brands it also earns back margin through rebates, display fees and marketing charges. The split is roughly three parts front margin to one part back margin.
### What is the difference between front margin and back margin in retail?
Front margin is the profit a retailer makes on the price difference between buying and selling a product. Back margin is money paid by suppliers to be on the shelf: listing fees, rebates, bulk discounts, display fees and marketing or sampling charges. Larger chains lean heavily on back margin; smaller ones depend more on front margin until scale kicks in.
### Is Bila Bila Mart going to IPO?
A Bursa Malaysia listing has been the plan since its investor, property developer Exsim, came on board. The stated timeline is roughly two to three years out, at a target of 300 stores from around 130 today. The company is already putting SC-compliant processes, independent directors and per-store certificates of fitness in place.
### How does a small chain compete with 7-Eleven and the hypermarkets?
By not fighting them head-on. Bila Bila prices in the gap between convenience and grocery, then curates each store to its neighbourhood rather than running one identical shelf everywhere. From about 7,000 SKUs it stocks only 2,000 to 3,000 per outlet, matched to local demographics, income and whether the location is residential or touristy.