The fast growth of online shopping has taken a toll on brick-and-mortar stores, especially in Taipei’s East District (東區), where an increasing number of storefronts sit idle as the number of shoppers shrinks, a survey released on Wednesday by Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) showed.
The nation’s retail sales rose 30.9 percent in the past decade to NT$42.77 trillion (US$1.39 trillion) last year, with online transactions rising 69.4 percent and department store sales gaining 46.5 percent, the survey found.
“The figures help explain why many storefronts in the city’s East District have become idle as they increasingly lose attraction and competitiveness as shopping venues,” Evertrust general manager Yeh Ling-chi (葉凌棋) said.
The district refers to the area off Zhongxiao E Road between MRT Zhongxiao Fuxing Station and the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, which is dotted with restaurants, shops, cafes and boutiques.
A Pacific Sogo Department Store (太平洋崇光百貨) branch and Ming Yao Department Store (明曜百貨), as well as other department stores, are on the main road.
The district’s decline might worsen as consumers become increasingly comfortable with online shopping and do not bother to visit stores that lack economic scale or special characteristics, Yeh said.
Statistics on passenger flows on the city’s MRT metropolitan railway system lent support to the gloomy prediction.
Passenger flows shrank 6.6 percent at MRT Zhongxiao Fuxing Station and 7.4 percent at MRT Zhongxiao Dunhua Station over the past five years, Yeh said.
“That will put correction pressures on storefront rents in the area until they can motivate,” he said.
The western district, better known as Ximen (西門), fared better with a 15.7 percent increase in passenger flows during the same period, thanks to its historical and cultural tourism resources, as well as a plethora of distinctive stores that have proved popular among young foreign travelers, he added.
The Xinyi District (信義) also witnessed an increase of 8.9 percent in passenger volume, with the pace soaring to 26 percent at MRT Taipei 101-World Trade Center Station, Evertrust found.
Consumers of all ages can find attractions at various retail and entertainment facilities in the area that cannot be replaced by online shopping, Yeh said, citing exotic restaurants as an example.
It is time that the government took steps to regenerate the East District, which is losing visitors to Ximen and Xinyi districts, as all three areas are linked by the MRT system, he said.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS