Eslite Group (誠品集團) aims to increase group revenue by between 10 percent and 15 percent over the next five years on the back of planned expansion in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong, chairman Robert Wu (吳清友) said yesterday.
The group, which runs bookstores, galleries and department stores, reported a consolidated revenue of NT$13 billion (US$427.98 million) for last year.
Sales for this year could break the NT$14 billion mark, Wu told a media briefing in Taipei after celebrating the group’s 25th anniversary.
Photo: Chang Hui-wen, Taipei Times
The group is set to open its first boutique hotel, with 104 rooms, in Taipei’s Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in the second quarter, and plans to launch its first two department stores in China in the second quarter next year, in Suzhou and Shanghai.
“The outlet in Suzhou may be a department store as large as the company’s flagship outlet in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義),” said Eslite Spectrum Corp (誠品生活) president Mercy Wu (吳旻潔), who is also vice chairwoman of the Eslite Group and Robert Wu’s daughter.
Eslite Spectrum operates department stores and restaurants. The subsidiary also plays an important role in the group’s overall growth and business strategy.
In the long term, the group plans to launch two or three outlets per year in Taiwan and at least one store in an overseas market, most likely in China and Hong Kong, she said.
The group is also eyeing opportunities to operate and manage a city-level cultural complex in China, she added.
Eslite Spectrum reported consolidated sales in the first two months of the year of NT$587.63 million, up 7.83 percent from a year earlier. Its overall revenue for last year stood at NT$3.44 billion, up 15.26 percent from 2012.
The company posted a net profit of NT$234.14 million, or NT$5.24 per share, for the first nine months last year, up from a net income of NT$157.77 million, or NT$3.85 per share, recorded a year earlier.
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