Word: retail
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...trouble-plagued Suvarnabhumi Airport since it opened, after 46 years of planning, last Sept. 28. Sinking swampland and hasty construction, Thai bureaucracy and allegedly corrupt deals by the former Thaksin regime are variously mooted as the causes of everything from cracked runway asphalt to customs delays, cramped toilets, monotonous retail outlets and long lines. But Thai geomancer Mas Kehardthum is convinced he has the real answer: construction was started in the wrong phase of Jupiter. "An improper calculation was made for structures in the city's eastern sector," argues Mas, president of the Feng Shui Research Institute of Thailand...
...something resembling an entertainment zone has emerged, concentrating shopping, dining and drinking choices within walking distance and giving travelers the no-tears nightlife they've been missing. It began with the 2005 opening of the Arcadia bar-and-restaurant complex behind the Plaza Senayan mall. Then, last September, another retail center, Senayan City, opened across the road from the mall. Factor in nearby hotel accommodation-the five-star Mulia Senayan is a short hop by cab on roads with little risk of jams-and party animals have a new location in which to base themselves...
...made around $200 million in pretax earnings last year on revenues of approximately $1.14 billion. That's about half the total profits and a third of sales at the privately owned Arcadia Group. It wasn't always this way. As recently as the late 1990s, says Nick Bubb, a retail analyst at Pali International in London, profits were as little as one-tenth last year's haul...
...Zara's short turnaround time, but that advantage largely disappears in Asia. H&M sources more than 60% of its products in the region, more than half of that from China, compared with Inditex's 34%. "H&M has been in Asia as a manufacturer for 30 years," says retail analyst Henrik Schultz of Danske Equities in Copenhagen. "It has a broader choice of suppliers, and strong relationships already in place. For perhaps the first time, it can set the timetable for trends...
Hong Kong and China are only H&M's first stops in Asia. Three more stores are planned for Hong Kong this year, and two in Shanghai. As a sign of how China has come to dominate the Asian retail market, Japan has taken a backseat. H&M will open its first store there by 2008. Other possibilities, like Singapore, are in the works. "We're taking things slow to start out, but we're clearly not going into Asia for 10 stores," Persson explains. "The potential for the market is just too huge...