Franz Collection Inc (法藍瓷), Taiwan’s maker and retailer of functional and home decor accessories, yesterday expanded into the dining business, which is expected to help elevate overall revenue this year by 20 to 30 percent from last year, chief executive Franz Chen (陳立恆) said.
The Taipei-based company, winner of awards at home and abroad, yesterday opened its first cafe in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum on Zhongshan N Road Sec 3 in an attempt to inject the venue with creative ambiance.
Chen said the company plans to open its second cafe in Shanghai, China, next month and is in partnership talks with logistics firms in Taiwan and China to set up more Franz Cafes across the Taiwan Strait.
Easily copied and franchised at relatively low cost, Franz Cafe may soon appear in central Taiwan and Chinese cities such as Chongqing, Changsha, Anwei and elsewhere.
“We aim for Franz Cafes to function as gathering venues where customers can brainstorm creative ideas with drinks served from their choice of Franz tea sets at prices lower than at Starbucks,” Chen said, adding the commercial space would also showcase other award-winning Taiwanese gifts amid pleasant music.
The new source of income may help the company to grow its total revenue this year by between 20 and 30 percent from about NT$3 billion (US$101.55 million) last year, Chen said.
The figure represented a pickup of more than 20 percent at more than 6,000 retail outlets in 53 countries from 2010, despite a lackluster global economy since the third quarter, he said.
China generated 50 percent of sales, followed by other overseas markets in the US and Europe at 40 percent and Taiwan at 10 percent, company data showed.
“First-quarter revenue expanded 20 percent in both Taiwan and China, but declined about 9 percent in advanced markets,” Chen said. “The stalling economy in Europe and the US cast a shadow over the growth target.”
To buffer shrinking sales in the West, Franz is seeking to expand its sales channel this year to include the world’s upscale hotels, while strengthening cooperation with department stores and traditional retail space for home decoration products, Chen said.
Franz products will be available for sale at Palace Hotel Tokyo, which is scheduled to open on May 17 near the Tokyo Imperial Palace, he said.
Meanwhile, the company is discussing cooperating with several other international hotels, Chen said.
“The extended sales channel underpins our confidence that the growth target is achievable,” he said.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained