Food and retail conglomerate Uni-President Group (統一集團) is set to transform Eslite Spectrum Corp’s (誠品生活) 24-hour bookstore in Taipei’s upscale Xinyi District (信義) into a shopping mall called “Dream Plaza,” adjacent to the group’s existing Uni-President Department Store (統一時代百貨).
Shirley Kao (高秀玲), head of Uni-President’s beauty business, which runs the group’s department stores and the Cosmed (康是美) health and beauty chain, said during a Christmas light switch-on event in Taipei on Friday that the group is to focus on having unique brands stationed in Dream Plaza to give the mall an edge in the already crowded department store scene in Xinyi District.
Kao, the wife of Uni-President Group chairman Alex Lo (羅智先) and the only daughter of the group’s late founder, Kao Ching-yuan (高清愿), said that part of Dream Plaza could be open around the clock, all week, including a flagship Starbucks store — the franchise in Taiwan is owned by the conglomerate — but that this would depend on consumer demand.
Photo: CNA
Xinyi Eslite is scheduled to bid farewell to fans on Christmas Eve after failing to convince Uni-President, the current landlord, to extend its lease.
The Xinyi store began opening 24 hours a day in mid-2020 after the Eslite Dunnan store was closed following the expiration of its lease at the end of May that year. After the closure of the Xinyi branch, the Songyan outlet, in Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, is to succeed the outlet and be open around the clock, all week.
The newly refurbished Songyan store would open no later than January next year, Eslite said.
Commenting on the group’s beauty business, Kao said that the existing Dream Mall in southern Taiwan has more than 800 vendors, while the Cosmed chain owns 100 pharmacies around Taiwan and is set on turning more of its outlets into 600m2 mini-department stores.
Uni-President Group has also acquired hypermarket operator Carrefour Taiwan after completing an acquisition earlier this year.
In the first nine months of this year, Carrefour Taiwan incurred a loss of NT$1 billion (US$31.4 million). Lo said new management would try to ensure the hypermarket chain improves its bottom line by streamlining operations.
The group would continue to expand its logistics business by setting up large logistics compounds around Taiwan, he added.
Regarding the 7-Eleven convenience store chain, Lo said there are plans to open more than 300 stores in Taiwan next year, boosting the total number to 7,111 branches.
Meanwhile, there are around 3,500 7-Eleven outlets in the Philippines, which is an 84 percent share of the convenience store market in the Southeast Asian country, with the number of shops expected to rise to 4,000 next year.
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
Pegatron Corp (和碩), a key assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones, on Thursday reported a 12.3 percent year-on-year decline in revenue for last quarter to NT$257.86 billion (US$8.44 billion), but it expects revenue to improve in the second half on traditional holiday demand. The fourth quarter is usually the peak season for its communications products, a company official said on condition of anonymity. As Apple released its new iPhone 17 series early last month, sales in the communications segment rose sequentially last month, the official said. Shipments to Apple have been stable and in line with earlier expectations, they said. Pegatron shipped 2.4 million notebook