Why can’t British retailers succeed in Taiwan?

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Another British retailer bites the dust in Taiwan, and the list of failures gets longer…

  • TESCO – sold out to Carrefour;
  • BOOTS – merged counters and business with Watson’s;
  • Marks & Spencer – Now closing;
  • Mothercare – only a few stores in Taiwan;

… can anyone add to this list?

In the rush to expand, many British companies are eager to expand in Asian markets… but they fail to grasp the complexities of the local market, the sheer amount of competition, the fickle nature of Taiwanese shoppers, and the importance of branding, but the worst sin of all: thinking you can make a quick buck here. What’s weirder is that each of these companies has successful operations in other Asian countries, including Thailand, Hong Kong, China, and Singapore… So what’s going on?

Lets start with TESCO. TESCO entered the local market and opened stores in Taipei, Taoyuen, and a few other locations. They were intending to open in December 2000 after purchasing their first location from Makro Asia. Shortly after they expanded to four stores in Taiwan, and a bullish statement by Peter Bracher, head of Tesco International Corporate Affairs, made it clear that they were intending to open upto 10 stores by 2004/5. Then in September 2005, Tesco sold their stores in Taiwan to Carrefour and closed them early in 2006. So what went wrong?

Well, I don’t have access to any of the sales figures, but as a customer I shopped their on more than one occasion. Frankly, I was not impressed. The format of the store was quite similar to the Carrefour stores that dot the island, the product quality for the local products were just not good enough, and they were very slow to introduce their own branded local products. There was an assumption that their typical model would work in Taiwan without sufficient localization. Only later on, when sales lagged, did the management act to introduce local products, such as Tesco Rice or Tesco Oil. While the pricing for these products were quite keen, we weren’t very keen on the freshness of the products, or the store arrangements.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20000812/ai_n14321366

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/2005/10/01/2003274021

Who is stealing your blog’s content?

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I was browsing some links for my website when I noticed this odd page (see image). And I started reading a ‘response’ to an article I wrote in October, 2007 about the problems of Adsense (original here), I noted that the organisation tone of the article seemed similar to mine, so I checked it out. Voila! Another content thief. This guy stole my entire article, added ten reasons why Adsense is good at the beginning (some most of which is similarly copied – from Problogger’s Article on the same topic, some seems original ) and posted it on his blog.

You can see the original. Then look at this jpeg of the article on his website.

stolen article

This guy stole my article, and even kept the original funky formatting that I used in this article. He didn’t even bother to change anything… just copy and paste. What is a blogger to do? Well, I posted a comment in the article, then fired off a polite cease-and-desist type of letter to his hosting company. It’s amazing how much you can find out from doing a whois search. Within an hour or so, it seems that the owner of this site removed the content as I was forced to go to Google’s cache to see the original entry. It’s still there (though it will be gone soon), and it’s still linked on his blog in his article directory.

shot#3

Basically, though, the site is a splog for articles from article directories and (probably) other stolen articles from innocent bloggers. In fact, the articles from the directory are all unattributed as well, which means that the break the article directories’ TOS. I doubt that anyone would find useful information on the site, which is why I didn’t post any links to this site. No sense giving it link-love.

I guess it’s flattering but it still makes me mad when someone copies my entire article or blog without any attribution or permission to do so. Who knows? If he bothered to ask, I might have said okay. If he had asked. But then thieves don’t ask. They just take.

July 4th: Taiwan welcomes cross straits direct flights – but what about all the other problems?

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While America celebrates the 4th of July, Taiwan is celebrating its own July 4th – the first direct (legal) cross-straits flights since 1949. Ma Ying-Jeou’s new government recently announced the easing of cross-straits relations, and has brought in something of a warming of cross-straits ties after years of stalling by the previous Chen and Lee administrations.

While it’s difficult to know what the upshot of this will be, it’s a welcome boost for tourist-related businesses in Taiwan, and is broadly a positive development in easing the political strains across the straits. In fact, just earlier this week, exchange controls on RMB (previously unavailable on Taiwan) were eased though not removed entirely.

But will this help to end Taiwan’s current international isolation? I’m afraid that won’t happen any time soon. European governments, including Britain’s, have slowly been upgrading their facilities and services on the island, but a full embassy they are not, and many embassy functions are simply not carried out.

There was a recent announcement that AIT (American Institute in Taiwan) was planning to move its base to Neihu, and plans were announced for garrison quarters in the new buildings. This however was quickly played down; but it’s clear that many western governments are now covertly laying the groundwork to establish diplomatic ties at some point. Such ties remain over the horizon for the time being.

Check out the BBC slideshow.

So this week’s events are just the next step in a long road towards sorting out the consequences of the Chinese Civil War. I won’t be making any bold predictions on peace talks, full-recognition, or any of a myriad of on-the-back-burner issues for quite some time.