Founded in 1929 in Guangzhou, Chow Tai Fook is a jewellery retailer with more than 7,000 stores in mainland China, most of them in the affluent top- and second-tier cities. Beyond mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, the company has stores in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the US and across Southeast Asia. The company began as a goldsmith and transformed the gold trade in 1956 when it introduced its so-called 999.9 gold offering an unprecedented level of purity that became a standard that was adopted by the Hong Kong government in 1984.