LVMH’s private-equity firm L Catterton is to launch nightlife chain Ce La Vi in Taipei next week, as it aims to raise its presence in Asia, company officials said yesterday.
The latest addition to the luxury sky lounge and restaurant brand on the 48th floor of the Breeze Nanshan department store is poised to wow fashion-savvy guests with Asian cuisine, fine liquor and breathtaking views, Ce La Vi marketing manager Alvin Lin (林俊志) said.
“We wanted to woo Chinese guests and Taipei stood out as the ideal choice,” Lin told reporters.
L Catterton invests in all major consumer segments, including food and beverage, retail and restaurants, beauty and wellness, and fashion and accessories.
The Taipei outlet of Ce La Vi would act as a stepping stone for the Chinese market, with another property slated to open in Shanghai in the summer, Lin said.
The luxury brand already has a presence in Hong Kong, Singapore, Colombo and Kuala Lumpur with all outlets occupying rooftops of landmark buildings, he said.
Foreign guests account for a big share of the brand’s clientele in Singapore and Hong Kong, but the Taipei branch should draw mainly local, fun-loving customers, Lin said.
Ce La Vi Taipei, due to have its grand opening on Saturday next week, is a joint venture with Loop Inc, a Taipei-based high-end entertainment and hospitality provider, Loop business development manager Steven Lin (林辰桓) said.
The two firms own equal stakes in the venue, which is expected to generate NT$150 million (US$4.86 million) in annual revenue in its first year, he said.
“The target is achievable, as the lounge bar is already attracting 1,000 guests ... and the number is expected to rise significantly after it starts to serve lunch and dinner on April 29,” Steven Lin said.
The venue has views of Taipei 101 and other buildings in the city’s Xinyi District (信義) and can seat 280 guests.
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
RSS