Hong Kong's Dairy Farm Inter-national Holdings Ltd, the Singapore-based bookstore Page One and the Grand Formosa Regent Hotel have signed deals to call Taipei 101 Mall home, an executive of the shopping center said yesterday.
"Several global brands such as Dairy Farm and Page One have decided to establish their first outlets in Taiwan in our center," said Claire Chen (陳慶華), marketing manager at Lend Lease Pty Ltd Taiwan, the leasing and marketing agency for the mall.
Grand Formosa Regent plans to open a 324-ping (1,071m2) restaurant in the center.
The 23,000-ping (76,027m2), four-floor mall has so far signed up 130 commercial tenants, representing 82 percent of the entire leasing space, Chen said.
The Hsinyi District mall will open in October.
Dairy Farm, the parent company of the nation's largest supermarket chain, Welcome, plans to open a grocery store on Taipei 101 Mall's lower level that will focus on both fresh and prepared food.
With outlets in Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong and China, Page One will offer a wide variety of English-language publications in its 800-ping (2,644m2) store on the shopping center's fourth floor.
"Page One will focus specifically on foreign-language books and periodicals rather than on Chinese publications," Chen said.
Retail giant Pacific Sogo Department Store (
However, according to Chen, "the deal is still under discussion."
Several restaurants will be located on the mall's fourth floor including a TGI Friday's, Diamond Tony's and the Grand Formosa Regent buffet.
There will be a standard food court on the mall's lower level.
However, Taipei 101's mall is not the only focus of interest in the Hsinyi District for the Grand Formosa Regent -- the hotelier has several other commercial projects in the area.
"The [Taipei 101] case is only one of several purposed Hsinyi District projects the company is working on," said Amy Hsueh (
The company is also in talks with Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store (
According to Hsueh, the Hsinyi District attracts both local and international business travelers, making it a desirable location for restaurants.
She said the Regent's new business strategy focuses on offering dining or accommodation utilizing leased properties.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day