Cashbox Partyworld KTV (錢櫃), a leading karaoke chain, will open four piano bar-styled rooms in its Hsimenting outlet early next year in a bid to attract a better class of client as the nation's karaoke market is facing saturation, company officials said yesterday.
The VIP rooms, now under construction, will sit on the top floor of the Taipei outlet facing Chunghua Road, according to Michael Hsiao (蕭森寶), chief executive officer of Cashbox.
He said no karaoke services will be provided in order to create five-star social atmosphere.
"This will be a perfect place for dignitaries or high-tech professionals to relax or discuss business," Hsiao said after a press conference yesterday called to announce the launch of a credit card issued by Cashbox and Fubon Commercial Bank (富邦銀行).
He denied media speculation that the VIP rooms, equipped with pianists and cooks and accessed by exclusive elevators, will have to be priced as high as NT$15,000 per hour to be profitable.
However, "The cost of three to five hours in the rooms may be more than NT$10,000," he said.
"We want to attract all kinds of customers, including those who do not like singing," Hsiao said.
While the new rooms will target the elite, Cashbox yesterday moved to consolidate its customer base by attracting white-collar workers. It launched the nation's first KTV co-brand credit card, which offers a 5 percent cash rebate on money spent in its 19 outlets nationwide.
Hsiao said the company hopes to issue 500,000 cards within one season.
"On top of Fubon's 2.5 million credit cards in circulation, we hope to translate some of its cardholders into our card customers," Hsiao said.
Fubon holds less than a 10 percent share in Cashbox.
Even though it targets a different market from its major rival, Holiday Entertainment Co (好樂迪娛樂事業), which has 58 outlets, Cashbox feels there is little room left in the market for expansion and therefore different customer categories must be maximized.
"Taiwan's KTV market is saturated. We have no plans to open new outlets by the end of the year" said Eric Leu (呂嘉正), a spokesman for Cashbox.
But its seventh outlet in China will open soon in Hangzhou, Leu said.
Most of Cashbox's 19 outlets occupy an entire building, with a spacious lobby on the first floor, and mainly cater to residents in cities.
Eyeing the boom season when students spend more time in KTV parlors, both chains are offering promotional programs to stimulate business.
"The co-branded credit card is one of the incentives. We expect to achieve NT$5.5 billion in annual sales," Leu said.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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