Teresa Tsai (蔡辰秋), 25, and her two best friends sat on a big flower-shaped chair in a female-only dressing room exchanging opinions on several of the latest pieces of lingerie yesterday, while another woman in the same room tested glamorous lipsticks that the department store had on display on the dressing table.
This independent dressing room, occupying a 15-ping (49.5m2) space, offers customers a private yet comfortable place to rest, refresh their make-up and try on new styles of underwear in one of eight partitioned changing rooms.
This is one of the features offered by Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store's (新光三越) newly opened A4 outlet, that is positioning itself in the market as a specialty store just for women.
"We want female customers to feel that this is tailor-made for them and that they can find complete lines of a range of fashionable accessories here," said Stephanie Kuo (郭思婷), special assistant to Shin Kong's executive vice president.
Giving another example, Kuo pointed to the carpet-covered shoe department on the outlet's first floor, saying "Customers will not have to walk on the cold floor when trying on shoes. This is the first of its kind in Taiwan although it involves a huge investment, considering that the carpets will have to be replaced occasionally."
She also strongly recommended the "Jeans Bar" on the third floor, which integrates several lines of designer-brand jeans in an exclusive area, enabling buyers to catch up with the latest fashion trends -- like jeans characterized by embroidery or inlaid with crystals.
A4, the company's fourth outlet in the competitive Xinyi district in eastern Taipei and its 13th nationwide, had its soft opening last week and the inauguration ceremony is scheduled for Friday.
It stands six storeys tall, with three of its five floors underground for customer parking.
To carve its own niche and avoid taking business away from the other three outlets, the company decided to follow the precedents set successfully by Idee Department Store (
Kuo said that many details must be seen to when presenting a store targeting women, such as providing visual effects using different colors in some areas, designing wide alleys to enhance a comfortable shopping experience, displaying products within a certain maximum height for women to reach easily and providing ample female toilets to avoid long queues.
Armed with five years experience in New York's Bergdorf Goodman department store as a purchasing agent, Kuo said she has been responsible for introducing new brands and providing opinions regarding the store's interior design and product mix since she returned to Taiwan two years ago.
Henry Liao (廖鎮漢), executive director of the Breeze Center, said he welcomed competitors to follow the center's example as "this proves that our foresight four years ago has led to taking the correct decision -- operating a specialty store for women is the future."
Saying that Taiwan's market has become mature enough to sustain such an operation, he noted that the Breeze Center is aiming higher and will start removing temporary displays and turning them into boutique-style areas, even in the food courts, to boost its image.
Kuo and Liao agreed that the spending power of women -- who dominate the fashion market -- will be less affected by economic factors such as rising commodity prices, but the two companies will gradually shift their focus to also take care of the male shopper segment, which is rapidly becoming more fashion-conscious.
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