Watsons Taiwan is scheduled to open its largest distribution center in Asia in Taoyuan County today, the company said yesterday.
The nation's largest health and cosmetics chain has invested NT$30 million (US$900,000) and five years of preparation in the distribution center.
The new facility will occupy a floor space of 6,500 pings (21,450m2), equivalent to the size of 65 Watsons outlets, Stuart Mitchell, managing director of Watsons Taiwan, told a press briefing.
Located near CKS International Airport in Taoyuan County, the center is equipped with two low-temperature rooms designed to maintain the quality of its chocolates and cosmetic products.
It was designed to help the company quickly respond to market demand and make sure the correct quantities of goods are distributed to its nearly 400 stores nationwide.
"Consumers will feel short-term and long-term impacts" from the establishment of the distribution center, twice the size of the original one, Mitchell said.
The company has opened 382 Watsons and 15 Missha stores, a South Korean cosmetics brand the company introduced earlier this year.
Watson's expects to slow down its expansion plan next year by opening just 50 new outlets -- compared with 70 stores last year and 87 this year -- and by refitting 50 stores in the face of diversified competition from convenience stores, hypermarkets and Internet shopping.
Mitchell said Watson's is expecting double-digit revenue growth from last year, although he declined to provide any detailed figures.
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