CyberMart (賽博數碼), a 3C retail arm of Taiwan-based Hon Hai Group (鴻海集團), reopened a store on Saturday in a key information technology district in Chongqing, China, after a fire forced it to shut down last year.
CyberMart, a crucial part of Hon Hai’s initiative to diversify its business to the retail sector from manufacturing, said -that Shiqiaopu District, where the store is located, serves as an information technology hub for Chongqing and a key location for 3C retailers.
GOING GREEN
For the reopening, CyberMart replaced all the lighting at the huge outlet with energy efficient LED fixtures and applied an advanced set-up arrangement used by IT retailers in Akihabara, an IT center in Tokyo.
The remodeled Shiqiaopu outlet also patterned itself after a warehouse concept used by IT hypermarkets in the US, the retailer said.
The store, which opened for the first time in 2000 with an area of about 20,000m2, was badly damaged by a fire on April 24 last year.
The retailer said that the upgraded Shiqiaopu store would become a model for its rivals in Chongqing and throughout western China.
The retailer added that the presence of the Shiqiaopu outlet and CyberMart’s three other stores in Chongqing would strengthen its lead over local competitors.
NATIONWIDE
CyberMart has opened more than 30 stores in China, mostly in major cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, and is planning to open another eight in second-tier and third-tier Chinese cities, including Xiamen, Fujian Province; Kunming, Yunnan Province; Zhengzhou, Henan Province and Urumqi in Xinjiang, by the end of this year.
Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, churns out gadgets for high-tech giants such as Apple, Dell and Hewlett Packard.
It had consolidated sales of more than US$100 billion last year.
However, with margins in contract manufacturing getting tighter, Hon Hai has been looking for ways to diversify into businesses to bring it closer to end users and give it greater pull over the entire supply chain.
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