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昨天去逛逛想买礼物给刚新居入伙的朋友，才发觉要关门了，虽然不意外，却还是有点惋惜，在JCUBE的几乎没什么可以捡了，不知道Vivo的分行情况如何？
rancfranc closure little impact on retailers
20140316_frac-st.jpg  Giant armchairs on platforms greet visitors as they enter Francfranc’s flagship store at VivoCity.
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Natasha Ann Zachariah
The Straits Times
Monday, Mar 17, 2014
As Japanese lifestyle store Francfranc prepares to close its two outlets here, furniture retailers have expressed surprise at the news, but say they are optimistic about their own expansion plans.
News of Francfranc's closure broke last Friday on its Singapore Facebook account, in which staff said in a message it would cease to operate here by May.
Yesterday, Mr Kazuyoshi Tanaka, director of Bals Singapore which manages Francfranc, said through a press statement that the management of Bals International "has decided to cease all operations for its wholly owned subsidiary here in Singapore, according to which Bals Singapore will be withdrawing from the retail business this year".
Francfranc's 9,300 sq ft store in JCube in Jurong East will close on April 20 and its 20,000 sq ft flagship VivoCity store will close on June 1. Francfranc's management declined to comment further.
Mr Takuo Nagahara, managing director of Japanese brand Muji Singapore, Malaysia and Australia, tells Life! he was "very surprised" about the news, adding: "I met the Francfranc management about two months ago to talk about a collaboration, but there was no comment from them about closing down."
Still, the news will not have any bearing on Muji's expansion plans. He says Muji, which sells household, storage and food items as well as clothes, will open three more stores here. This includes its biggest one yet - at 8,000 sq ft - which will open on Level 2 at VivoCity in June.
American brand Crate & Barrel, which has a 16,000 sq ft store spread over two levels at Ion Orchard, is also expanding. Its second store, a five-storey 25,000 sq ft one, will open at the upcoming Orchard Gateway in the second half of this year.
Mr Yung Ong, executive director for the Singapore branches of the American brand and its sister store CB2, says: "Francfranc's departure is shocking, but it's different from us. We get about 10,000 people a good week at our Ion Orchard store, which is good traffic, even though we're on the higher floors of the mall. There's a lot of variety for furniture in Singapore and it's getting better. I don't think the market is getting saturated."
Earlier this week, French-owned furniture brand Habitat announced it was making a comeback to Singapore, with a store in October at Big Box, an upcoming eight-storey complex in Jurong East. Habitat opened here in the 1990s but closed in 1996 due to poor sales.
When Life! visited Francfranc's VivoCity store on Thursday afternoon, discount signs were up on selected items while a line formed at the cashier as the lunch crowd took advantage of the clearance items.
Housewife Adeline Oon, who was checking out the sale items, says Francfranc's high prices could have put off shoppers. Prices start at $2 for stationery items and go up to $4,000 for a three-seater sofa.
The 40-year-old says: "I'm a fan of Francfranc. I like the concept and the modern contemporary look of the products. But if you have an eye for shopping, I think you can get similar things elsewhere. It's just convenient to get them all in one place at Francfranc."
Mr Kenneth Foo, 36, an industrial lubricant manager, who was visiting the store for the first time, says: "There is too much of everything in the shop. I think they are trying to do too much."
In 2012, Francfranc founder and chief executive officer Fumio Takashima told Life! that he was looking to open seven or eight more stores in the next two years.
Associate professor of marketing education Seshan Ramaswami, from the Singapore Management University, says international brands should be cautious about replicating their homeground success overseas. "A store that might do very well in one mall might languish in a different mall because the match of the store's products to the mall's clientele might not be a good one.
"This is also why, in general, foreign retailers often struggle in domestic environments. It's not easy to simply transplant a retail model of assortment, ambience, prices and location from one part of the world to the other."
Both mall managements - Mapletree Commercial Property Management, which runs VivoCity, and CapitaMalls Asia, which operates JCube - did not comment on who will take up the retail space after Francfranc leaves.
- See more at: http://business.asiaone.com/news ... thash.IMQ9FWdJ.dpuf
https://www.facebook.com/Francfrancworld
本帖最后由 Foojee 于 8-4-2014 12:51 PM 编辑
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发表于 8-4-2014 10:06 AM
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