Following its acquisition by the Far Eastern Group (遠東集團) early last year, Far Eastern Geant (愛買吉安) is aggressively expanding to demonstrate its commitment to the domestic market.
The nation's third-largest hypermarket chain expects to add at least one new store per year to its existing 14 outlets nationwide to strengthen its economies of scale, company president Pascal Billaud told reporters yesterday.
It also plans to remodel some of the stores to boost its image and provide a pleasant shopping environment, he added.
These new projects are being backed by its parent company, Far Eastern Department Stores Ltd (
Last September, French retailer Casino Guichard-Perrachon SA sold its 50 percent holding -- worth NT$738 million -- in Far Eastern Geant to Far Eastern Department Stores following its decision to exit the local market and focus on emerging markets such as Brazil and Thailand in search of faster sales growth.
Far Eastern Geant posted sales of more than NT$13 billion last year, up 11 percent from 2005, Billaud said. The company remained in the red, however.
He made the remarks during a press briefing in Taichung after the reopening ceremony for the company's Chungkang (中港) store, whose one-year refurbishment project cost millions of NT dollars.
Customer response to the remodeling of the Taichung store has been positive, the firm said, with sales last month jumping 50 percent from the same period last year.
The company this year plans to strengthen its private label product mix and offer a better range of household appliances, marketing director Fiona Wang (
By integrating the group's resources, the Far Eastern Group is also building an online store to lure Internet-savvy consumers, who can order products from the hypermarket. The electronic platform will be formally launched in a few months, Billaud said.
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs
ELECTRONICS BOOST: A predicted surge in exports would likely be driven by ICT products, exports of which have soared 84.7 percent from a year earlier, DBS said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast for Taiwan this year to 4 percent from 3 percent, citing robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI)-related exports and accelerated shipment activity, which are expected to offset potential headwinds from US tariffs. “Our GDP growth forecast for 2025 is revised up to 4 percent from 3 percent to reflect front-loaded exports and strong AI demand,” Singapore-based DBS senior economist Ma Tieying (馬鐵英) said in an online briefing. Taiwan’s second-quarter performance beat expectations, with GDP growth likely surpassing 5 percent, driven by a 34.1 percent year-on-year increase in exports, Ma said, citing government
HELPING HAND: Approving the sale of H20s could give China the edge it needs to capture market share and become the global standard, a US representative said The US President Donald Trump administration’s decision allowing Nvidia Corp to resume shipments of its H20 artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China risks bolstering Beijing’s military capabilities and expanding its capacity to compete with the US, the head of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party said. “The H20, which is a cost-effective and powerful AI inference chip, far surpasses China’s indigenous capability and would therefore provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development,” committee chairman John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican, said on Friday in a letter to US Secretary of