Eslite Spectrum Corp (誠品生活), which runs the Eslite bookstore chain and department stores, has seen e-commerce sales double from June to last month compared with a year earlier, it said on Thursday, as online shopping soared during a nationwide level 3 COVID-19 alert earlier this year.
The boost in online sales came as strict disease prevention regulations in May to curb local COVID-19 infections affected sales at traditional retail outlets.
Eslite in December last year launched a new Web site and mobile app to further tap into the e-commerce market.
Photo: Chang Hui-wen, Taipei Times
Its membership has grown 14 percent from 2.5 million to 2.85 million, company representatives told an event at one of its department stores in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) to announce an anniversary sales campaign.
Members drive 65 percent of overall sales, from 50 percent last year, nearing a goal of 70 percent set by Eslite chairwoman Mercy Wu (吳旻潔), company officials said, adding that the number of “black card” members, who are believed to be highly loyal and relatively affluent, soared 63 percent.
Black card status is awarded to “gold card” members who make NT$50,000 in purchases, they said, adding that this low barrier to entry led to the rapid increase of black card members.
Black card members on average make 1.2 purchases per week, both online and at retail outlets, they said.
Eslite Spectrum plans to create a “premium” room for black card members at its department store in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋) next month, after the success of a similar space at its Eslite Spectrum Songyan Store (誠品生活松菸店) in Taipei’s Songshan Cultural and Creative Park (松山文創園區).
Books remain the company’s most popular items, followed by cosmetic care products and consumer electronic devices, the company said.
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
NVIDIA PLATFORM: Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and a Taiwan site is to enter production next month, Nvidia wrote on its blog Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the world’s biggest electronics manufacturer, yesterday said it is expanding production capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) servers based on Nvidia Corp’s Blackwell chips in Taiwan, the US and Mexico to cope with rising demand. Hon Hai’s new AI-enabled factories are to use Nvidia’s Omnivores platform to create 3D digital twins to plan and simulate automated production lines at a factory in Hsinchu, the company said in a statement. Nvidia’s Omnivores platform is for developing industrial AI simulation applications and helps bring facilities online faster. Hon Hai’s Mexican facility is to begin production early next year and the
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
RSS