Faced with increasing competition in Taipei's Hsinyi district, New York New York Exhibition and Shopping Mall is planning on targeting older, and hopefully richer, customers.
Next month, the shopping complex will also begin transforming part of its basement food court into a retail area for women's clothes, jewelry and home furnishings, a company official told the Taipei Times yesterday.
"We will change our target customer segment to 25-to-35-year-old females from the 18-to-25-year-old generation by further focusing on the American casual style and urban fashion image," said Margaret Lau (劉景雲), New York New York's sales and marketing supervisor.
The retailer will also introduce new stores into the mall, like Moss for women's clothes and Muji, a Japanese home furnishing brand, Lau said, adding that the changes would be completed by mid-April.
Labeling itself a multifunction venue for retail and exhibition, New York New York opened in 2000.
According to Lau, exhibitions and rent from function rooms made up about 50 percent, or NT$1.4 billion, of New York New York's sales last year.
However, following the expansion of the nearby Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall, New York New York plans to allocate more floor space to retail stores, reducing the exhibition area to 630 ping from 1,280 ping, Lau said.
The shopping complex has also teamed up with Alexander Health Club (
"If we don't undertake such an adjustment, we will encounter a shrinking customer base in the cut-throat competition among the area's department stores and malls," Lau said.
The company expects to boost its revenue to NT$1.54 billion this year, with 70 percent coming from retail sales, she said.
The opening of Taipei 101 Mall in November last year and of Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store's A9 outlet in late December has created a cluster of shopping malls in the Hsinyi district.
Lau claimed New York New York's sales grew about 30 percent between November and February compared to the previous year. But the growth has clearly not been felt by everyone in the mall.
"We saw weaker sales here than in our outlet in Shin Kong," said a salesperson at Ralph Lauren Sports, who asked to remain anonymous.
"I can easily see sales of up to NT$60,000 a day at Sogo Department Store compared to daily sales of around NT$10,000 here," a salesperson at DC Shoe Co said, also on condition of anonymity.
The company's success will depend on its ability to change its operational thinking, an industry watcher said.
"The mall should raise the return rate from its sales area, as it measures only around 8,300 ping, which is much smaller than its major rivals in the area, including the 30,000-ping Shin Kong and 23,000-ping 101 Mall," said Mavis Chu (朱秀芬), retail services manager at CB Richard Ellis Ltd, Taiwan branch.
"The mall should introduce at least one brand with a good reputation on each level, motivating customers to shop on every floor," Chu said. "It can also lengthen its business hours to differentiate its service from other stores."
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai