Pacific Sogo Department Store (
"Without any doubt our sales, already hard hit by SARS, will slide further," Sogo vice president Lee Kuang-rong (
On Sunday the Taipei City Government's Bureau of Health notified Sogo that one of the retailer's cashiers was suspected of having the virus. Newspaper and television reports were plastered with stories of the Sogo case yesterday.
According to Lee, the cashier returned to Taipei from a trip to Chiayi on April 28 and came down with a fever on April 30.
In an effort to prevent the spread of SARS, Sogo asked 175 staff who had potential contact with the cashier at first and fifth floor checkout counters to quarantine themselves at home.
The employees account for 10 percent of Sogo's workforce.
The store also began requiring customers to undergo temperature checks yesterday before entering its premises.
Retailers said the incident couldn't have come at a worse time.
"Ever since the SARS outbreak, our sales have seen a nearly 30 percent drop [over the same period last year]," Lee said.
The situation may push sales down by as much as 50 percent when shoppers shun Sogo because of the incident, he added.
On hearing the news yesterday one consumer said she would cross Sogo off her shopping list.
"I won't go shopping at Sogo in the near future," said Chen Pao-yu (
"There are lots of other department stores I can go to anyway," she said.
Another consumer said she prefers to avoid public places altogether now.
"I prefer not to go to any shopping centers or movie theaters," said Maggie Sung (
The Sogo report is expected to impact the sector as a whole.
Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store (
Traffic is even slower after the Sogo incident.
"We noticed a significant drop in the number of shoppers this morning," Shin Kong assistant manager Shauna Lee (李香萩) told the Taipei Times yesterday. "Traffic is down by nearly one-third."
Starting today the retailer will also require temperature checks at the door.
Prevention measures are raising retailers' operational costs.
Core Pacific City Mall (
"The total spending on purchasing thermometers, masks and gloves is several million NT dollars per month," Core Pacific spokesperson Alison Kao (
With Mother's Day sales scheduled for this week -- and in an effort to keep customers -- Sogo is offering free home-delivery services.
Consumers can enjoy the same discount prices and freebies via phone orders.
Last year Sogo reported NT$520 million in Mother's Day sales.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to