The President Chain Store Corp (統一超商), which operates 3,680 local 7-Eleven convenience stores, reported an annual revenue increase of 3.8 percent to NT$80.9 billion (US$2.6 billion) for last year.
The nation's largest convenience-store operator said it believes the market still has room to grow, and it plans to open its 4,000th store by the end of this year.
"The retail sector in Taiwan still has room to grow ... we plan to establish another 320 stores in cities and suburbs this year," Wang Wen-hsin (
Hsu Chung-jen (徐重仁), the corporation's president, said that, in addition to its usual wide range of daily commodities and services, 7-Eleven now also stocks hot new products like Apple Computer Inc's iPod Shuffle digital music players.
The first batch of iPods was sold out in 7-Eleven stores last week and the second batch will be available soon, Wang said.
Another major goal of the President Chain this year is to maximize distribution of its "icash" card, which allows consumers to purchase goods in its stores, Hsu said.
The company has issued over 1 million icash cards since they were introduced in December last year, and is pursuing the possibility of integrating the cards with MRT or credit cards to further enhance their appeal to consumers, he said.
Although the President Chain's parent company, Uni-President Enterprise Corp (統一企業), has announced plans to tap into the lucrative TV-shopping market, Hsu said yesterday that the company has decided to put this project on hold.
It is speculated that Uni-President decided to shelve the project because of the limitations of TV shopping. Currently, the market is led by the Eastern Home Shopping Network (
After losing the bid to open 7-Eleven stores in Beijing and Shanghai to 7-Eleven Japan, Hsu said that the President Chain has not given up on opening convenience stores and supermarkets in the massive Chinese market, and is looking for local partners or another chain of outlets which might enable it to do this.
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last