Eslite Spectrum Corp (誠品生活) yesterday held a grand opening for a new department store in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店) that is the largest in Asia by floor space and would help the leisure lifestyle services provider swing into profit next year.
The new outlet, Eslite Spectrum Sindian, has almost 20,000 ping (66,000m2) of floor space that might generate annual revenue of NT$4 billion to NT$5 billion (US$123.96 million to US$154.95 million) by housing 250 retail brands including 20 themed restaurants to meet the entertainment needs of people in neighboring areas, Eslite Spectrum chairwoman Mercy Wu (吳旻潔) said.
The number of visits turned out higher than expected during the soft opening, giving Eslite Spectrum the confidence to aim high, Wu said.
Photo: CNA
Eslite Spectrum, which operates Eslite Bookstore (誠品書局) and Eslite Hotel (誠品行旅), as well as supplies kitchen equipment and wines, has not yet emerged from COVID-19 pandemic-related losses.
Things should improve next quarter and turn a new page next year with help of the Sindian property and forthcoming outlets in Kaohsiung and Taichung, Wu told reporters.
The Sindian branch takes up partial floors of Yes, Life Yulon City (裕隆城), a mixed-use complex owned by Yulon Motor Co (裕隆汽車).
Photo: CNA
Wu said Yulon invited Eslite to help convert the massive plot of land into a mixed-use complex in 2013, and she was in talks with more than 2,000 retail brands and restaurants to make a presence in the property.
The department store’s location in New Taipei City made luxury brands impractical partners, and Eslite Spectrum had to focus on community-minded shops and eateries instead, Wu said.
“We have to adjust and drop our past preference for lesser-known brands and collaborate with Uniqlo, Niko, Nike and other popular fashion and sports brands to satisfy the needs of different customer groups,” Wu said.
Toward the end, the company also believed there must be sufficient dining options that could account for up to 40 percent of the space, she said.
Still, Eslite Spectrum has set aside generous space for book collections that are as large and diverse as in the Eslite bookstore across from National Taiwan University, Wu said, adding that the bookstore would organize exhibitions and events to entertain customers.
In addition, Vieshow movie theaters are occupying the sixth to eighth floors and could seat 2400 people, according to Yes, Life Yulon City data.
The Yulon Group is seeking to add high-rise residential buildings in the complex to make the best use of its space.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
RSS