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.
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