The Eslite Spectrum Songyan (松菸誠品) location has been tapped to expand to a 24-hour service to replace the popular all-night Xinyi District (信義) outlet after it closes, Eslite Spectrum Corp (誠品生活) said yesterday.
The company operates the prominent Eslite bookstore chain, department stores and leisure lifestyle service in Taiwan and abroad.
Uni-President Group, the largest of the seven landlords of the Xinyi store, was the holdout in refusing to renew the lease, which expires at the end of this year.
Photo: CNA
Eslite Spectrum chairwoman Mercy Wu (吳旻潔) announced the new 24-hour location at a news conference.
“As long as I live and run Eslite, there will always be a 24-hour bookstore in Taiwan,” Wu said.
The Xinyi branch took over the 24-hour operation in the spring of 2020 after the landmark Dunhua outlet in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) was closed after the building was marked for an urban renewal venture.
Wu said she favored the Songyan venue over other locations given its capacity, after renovation, to house restaurants, exhibitions, performances and other events, along with a wider selection of books.
Furthermore, the Songyan location is close to the company’s Eslite Hotel (誠品行旅) and within the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park (松山文創園區), providing benefits from tourism and cross-selling, Wu said.
Songshan Cultural and Creative Park Director Chen Yu-hsiu (陳玉秀) said the mall is close to multiple locations that could benefit from a 24-hour bookstore, including the Taipei Dome, cinemas, hotels and the city-designated historical site in which the mall is located.
The Songyan branch last year held trial runs of after-hours operations, although a date for its official extension of hours has yet to be decided, the company said.
The bookstore chain was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and is seeking to break even this year, Wu said.
“We used the time during the pandemic to develop ways to improve market share, and it is time to see if the strategies can pay off,” Wu said.
The department store business is scheduled to open a new Eslite Spectrum branch in New Taipei City’s Sindian District (新店) next quarter, which is to feature 19,000 ping (62,700m2) of floor space, making it the company’s largest outlet, Wu said.
More than 250 retailers, food stores and leisure facilities are to be featured in the box-shaped complex, Wu said.
The company is striving to ensure that it does not look like an average shopping mall, she added.
Additional reporting by CNA
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday said it plans to resume operations at two coal-fired power generators for three months to boost security of electricity supply as liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply risks are running high due to the Middle East conflict. The two coal-fired power generators are at Mailiao Power Plant in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮). The plant, operated by Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), supplied electricity to Taipower’s power grid until the end of last year. Taipower’s decision came about one month after Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) on March 10 said that the nation had no imminent
RSS