Watson’s Personal Care Stores (Taiwan) Co Ltd (台灣屈臣氏), the nation’s largest cosmetics and drugstore operator, aims to expand its local outlets to 600 over the next two years in a bid to boost total sales.
Watson’s yesterday launched its 500th outlet in Taiwan — a new generation store in Taipei’s Ximending (西門町) area to give customers a larger space to experience interactive shopping services.
“We have improved our store segmentation strategy to meet demand from customers in different areas,” managing director Toby Anderson told a media briefing yesterday.
Watson’s launched a store refurbishment initiative last year to renovate 100 stores, Anderson said.
As a result, the company decided to renovate a further 100 stores this year, he said.
Anderson said that Watson’s, which operates cosmetics stores in 12 markets in Asia and Europe, sees Taiwan as a benchmark for other markets to launch pilot store models.
“Taiwan has a mature retail market with sophisticated consumer behavior, which makes it a great place for innovation,” Anderson said.
Watson’s also launched another store model — the “Generation Y store” — in Taiwan, catering to the needs of younger consumers. Generation Y stores offer more fashionable skincare and cosmetics products.
Anderson said the company plans to launch two Generation Y stores in Shanghai later this year, due to the success in Taiwan.
The company said revenue from Taiwan last year rose to the highest level in four years and it expects to maintain the growth momentum this year.
Strong sales momentum primarily came from its own-brand products, which total more than 600 items, as sales from those products doubled or even tripled the overall growth rate, Anderson said.
Watson’s plans to concentrate more on boosting revenue from its online stores, as the company has more than 6 million online-store members and 650,000 downloads of its mobile app.
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