Ever imagined fireworks going off just at the perfect moment to make your wedding even more romantic? Thought about having a professional photographer capture the most memorable moments of your honeymoon?
These are just two of the novel ideas being brought to Taiwan by Tokyo-based Dears Brain, Japan's fifth-largest "house wedding" firm in terms of revenue.
"Taiwan's wedding market is like Japan's 10 years ago, when the `house wedding' concept was still new to the public. But now in Japan, 15 percent of the newlyweds choose to do it this way," said Yoshiyuki Matsuba, director of Dears Brain, during an interview in Taipei on Saturday.
PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
Bullish about the market's potential, the Japanese firm plans to set up Dears Brain Taiwan (迪詩) at the end of this month and spend NT$80 million (US$2.4 million) to acquire the operational rights to Grace Hill (麗庭莊園), a church-style venue that offers wedding planning services in Taipei's Neihu District.
The original investors in Grace Hill will become the landlords leasing the facilities to Dears Brain's, he said.
Matsuba, 32, will be in charge of Dears Brain's Taiwan business when the new company starts operations next month.
"House wedding" has been a popular wedding style in the West for decades. With stand-alone mansions and outdoor gardens as the main elements, newlyweds and their guests can celebrate the day in their own private space, in stark contrast to narrow and noisy venues often seen in restaurants or hotels.
Sensing a crisis arising as Japan's wedding market is shrinking due to the low birth rate, Dears Brain is eager to expand overseas with Taiwan, known as a Japan-friendly country, as its first foreign market to test the waters.
"We have been looking for the best markets to enter, from Korea to Beijing and Shanghai. Thanks to Mitsui and Co (Taiwan) Ltd's help in March, we came into contact with Grace Hill, which shares similar service concepts with us," Matsuba said.
Established three years ago with a space of 2,000 ping (6,600m2), Grace Hill claims to be the nation's first house wedding operator. It managed sales of NT$120 million last year by hosting weddings and business banquets, a figure Matsuba said will significantly jump after Dears Brain introduces its service model and implements cost control schemes.
"Three years ago, Dears Brain also acquired a poorly performing wedding firm in Japan and has successfully boosted its performance" by overhauling its operations, he said, explaining his confidence that the company would make a splash in the marketplace.
According to government statistics, approximately 140,000 couples got married in Taiwan last year, about one-fifth of the number in Japan.
"Our goal is to provide consumers with an alternative, and I believe the marketplace will change due to the competition," he said.
Although the Taiwanese market is smaller, Dears Brain believes that more couples will choose house weddings over normal banquets at hotels, thanks to people's growing budgets and a trend to pursue tailor-made weddings.
The new business expects to host 500 weddings and banquets during its first year of operations with revenues topping NT$300 million. Following two years of fine-tuning, the firm plans to invest NT$400 million building two wedding houses, one in Taipei and the other in either Taichung or Kaohsiung.
"In the third year, we hope to serve 1,500 couples, about 1 percent of the market, and post sales of NT$800 million," Matsuba said.
It is estimated that a couple on average spends NT$700,000 on their wedding, from shooting wedding photos to hosting banquets. That puts the overall value of the market at close to NT$100 billion a year.
Taipei 101 has also declared its intention to tap into the top-end wedding market by making use of its unique features.
Last month, it announced plans to offer a "one stop shopping" wedding service that ranges from making purchases to booking wedding venues.
Its main weapon will be to allow big spenders to make their marriage proposals in messages on the electric signboards on the world's tallest building at a cost of more than NT$3 million a time. It is aiming for sales of NT$50 million a year.
Dears Brain says that in addition to having wedding planners that map out detailed procedures for each couple, the firm also plans to open a bridal shop next spring.
Dears Brain president Hirokazu Kogishi was quoted by CNA on Thursday as saying he is also considering setting up a school to train more professional wedding planners in Taiwan. It is a long-term idea and no details are available as yet, Matsuba said.
Established in 2001, Dears Brain posted sales of ¥4.4 billion (US$36 million) last year and has a goal of ?6.5 billion in turnover this year. It plans to enter the market in Singapore, China, Malaysia and Hong Kong as well as Taiwan.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured