Wellcome Taiwan Co (
With most of its Wellcome stores categorized as standard, or medium-sized, stores, the firm is developing a smaller design, called "Express Fresh," requiring only around 80 ping (264m2).
While each standard store requires around 2,000 households to support its business, the new "convenient value supermarket," as the firm describes it, only requires 800 to 1,200 households.
"The innovation is necessary as hypermarkets and convenience stores continue with their aggressive expansion, squeezing the supermarket sector's survival space," chief executive officer Howard Tsai (
"The public's consumption patterns have also changed as the birth rate has dramatically dropped and small families become the mainstream," he said.
Aimed at providing consumers with convenient locations to purchase fresh foodstuffs and daily necessities, Wellcome Taiwan started brewing the Express Fresh concept in September last year and the first outlet was opened in Sindian (
It is expected to open the 7th store of this kind today, bringing its total number of stores to 188 nationwide, including 179 Wellcome stores, five Jason's Market Place stores and four Wellcome Gourmet stores.
Tsai said the new format has proved a cost-effective model that performs well, especially as acquiring larger locales gets increasingly difficult.
The Express Fresh model on average generates sales of between NT$4.5 million (US$135,200) and NT$5 million a month, compared with NT$7 million seen in standard stores, he said.
But the cost, including rent, personnel and hardware, is only half that of mid-sized outlets, he said.
By the end of the year, the firm hopes to add another 40 to 50 stores of the Express Fresh model, although it may also expand standard-sized supermarkets.
Wellcome Taiwan, founded in 1987 by Hong Kong's Dairy Farm Co (
When the retail market was affected by the consumer credit abuse storm last year, Wellcome Taiwan saw the performance of its stores dwindle as shopper traffic slowed.
Ministry of Economic Affairs statistics showed the supermarket sector
recorded revenues of NT$88.5 billion last year, up by 1.93 percent from the
previous year.
The sector is headed by Pxmart (全聯社), the nation's biggest “hard
discounter” better known as Chuan Lian Center (全聯福利中心), with over 300
stores.
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in artificial-intelligence (AI) chips, yesterday said that small-volume production of 3-nanometer (nm) chips for a key customer is on track to start by the end of this year, dismissing speculation about delays in producing advanced chips. As Alchip is transitioning from 7-nanometer and 5-nanometer process technology to 3 nanometers, investors and shareholders have been closely monitoring whether the company is navigating through such transition smoothly. “We are proceeding well in [building] this generation [of chips]. It appears to me that no revision will be required. We have achieved success in designing
RSS