Chinese discount retailer Miniso Group Holding filed for an initial public offering on Thursday, hoping to raise US$100 million (HK$775 million) on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company, which specializes in lifestyle home goods, plans to list on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “MNSO”, according to the prospectus submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Miniso is backed by Chinese technology conglomerate Tencent and private equity firm Hillhouse Capital, each owning 5.4% of stock share. Goldman Sachs and BofA Securities are joint bookrunners on the deal.

The Guangzhou-based retailer was founded in 2013 and has over 4,200 stores worldwide, selling home decor, small electronics, accessories and cosmetics. Miniso said as of June 30, around 2,500 of its stores were in China with 1,680 based overseas.

Miniso generated US$1.3 billion (HK$10.1 billion) in revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30.

The company’s products first rose to prominence in mainland China in 2013 for their simplistic and Japanese-influenced designs, but Miniso was soon accused of copying other major lifestyle Japanese brands such as Muji, Uniqlo and Daiso.

Mike Wong, Miniso’s regional manager for Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, defended the brand in an interview in 2018, saying its design teams were from Japan and some elements were bound to be similar. He said 90% of Miniso’s products were made in China, while the remaining items, mostly food, were manufactured in Japan and Korea.

Miniso stores in Hong Kong appear to have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing recession, with several stores found to be shuttered after an Apple Daily reporter visited several of its locations in the city.

At one of the stores in Mong Kok on Thursday, most customers left the shop without buying any items. One customer, who gave her surname as Leung, said she would usually spend around HK$100 buying home decor products.

She agreed that there were some design similarities between Miniso and other major Japanese brands, and it was obvious that the mainland company’s quality was “not as good” as Muji’s. She added that she had no interest in investing in the company’s upcoming IPO.

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