TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – One year after pulling out of Taipei Railway Station, Eslite Spectrum plans to open a bookstore across the station in September, reports said Tuesday (May 28).
In early 2023, the chain shuttered a bookshop and food zone at the station’s underground K zone. Three years earlier, a smaller Eslite bookstore in an adjacent area also closed its doors, per CNA.
At a meeting with shareholders on Tuesday, Chair Mercy Wu (吳旻潔) said the company will return to the bustling Taipei station neighborhood in September, UDN reported. The new store will occupy more than 2,600 square meters in a building at the Zhongxiao West Road and Gongyuan Road intersection. It will also include restaurants.
Wu expressed optimism that losses after the pandemic would be replaced by profits in 2024. The Eslite at the Yes!Life mall in Xindian, New Taipei was the group’s first-ever store to report revenue of more than NT$4 billion (US$124.41 million) within one year, she said.
The Eslite Spectrum Taichung 480 in Taichung is expected to start turning a profit during the third quarter of 2024, according to Wu. However, the opening of a specially designed 19,800-square-meter store planned for Tainan will be postponed from the final quarter of this year to the first half of 2025.