Just completed a year without buying anything from 7-11. I saw a lot of failed convenience & failing mom’n’pop stores around Taiwan when I did my last island tour, and it made me sad that 7 and Family Fart are dominating the landscape so much.
So I took a stand, made a protest.
It’s been hard sometimes to resist the draw (and the convenience), but I’m through.
Expect my actions to make a considerable dent in their 2014 profits, if you hold shares, sell now 
.
Hi-Life and OK it is, then.
[quote=“Nuit”]Just completed a year without buying anything from 7-11. I saw a lot of failed convenience & failing mom’n’pop stores around Taiwan when I did my last island tour, and it made me sad that 7 and Family Fart are dominating the landscape so much.
So I took a stand, made a protest.
It’s been hard sometimes to resist the draw (and the convenience), but I’m through.
Expect my actions to make a considerable dent in their 2014 profits, if you hold shares, sell now .[/quote]
They’re not even blinking an eye if you don’t buy anything at their stores … yes, it’s sad that mom and pop stores have to close down, not all tho … some resist. Anyways, the stores are probably cleaner and products kept better through aircon, real refrigeration. I remember the time there were no 7-11’s and FM’s where I lived in Taiwan, just grey and dusty, hot M&P stores, where they lived, watched TV. took care of the baby, Xiao Huang did his homework and amah cooked. Nothing familiar to home, no product I could buy without traveling 2 hours to Tianmu or SOGO …
But convenience stores are convenient, not cheap tho! But remember that President Chain stores has more than 7-11, they have bakeries, Cold Stone, Starbucks … and more, so you have to avoid all of them to protect the small retail business owner. But good for you …
One other thing … some Moms&Pops moved on and took a franchise from one of the chain stores … securing their livelihood … even open 2-3 of them.
I try to avoid Tongyi (Uni-President) because of their persistent willingness to ignore any food safety considerations and sell contaminated food (even before the latest scandals). In any country with decent regulators this company would have been shut down long time ago.
I still shop at Carrefour though, so it’s a half-assed boycott.
How many foreign owned retailers
or food manufacturers are there in Taiwan, it’s really really hard to avoid president and tsingyi and Formosa plastic, everything except Costco and Ikea is local owned as far as I can tell, maybe even Costco is a franchise?
I don’t know of any truly foreign company here of any size. Costco is a joint-venture with 大統集團 (President Group, apparently unrelated to Uni-President). IKEA in Taiwan is run by Swire (as is Coca-Cola). Even in the technology sector, Kingston (a US company) here is a joint-venture with 遠東集團 (Far Eastern) and nVidia operations are owned by a Hong Kong-registered company.
Both Kingston and Nvidia were setup by Taiwanese or Taiwanese Americans right?
Swire is/was a British-HK company that controls Cathay pacific among other interests, had no idea they ran Ikea too (although I’d say its more of an investment nature)!
B&Q got bought out by their Taiwanese partners years ago.
when there are few directly run foreign companies its usually because of problems they encounter such as corruption or competition from local connected business groups. One great example being the absence of any internationals private gas vendors like statoil or shell, hence the disgraceful forecourts around the country. at least the fuel is cheap though!
Please don’t say you really thought that I thought they are.
My year was up last month, and I went and dropped $200 at a 7 on Sat night. I was shocked (and I’m being as impartial as possible here) by the price & quality of one of the products.
IMO, the frequenting of a 7 is nothing more than an annual tax on your income, and is one to be avoided.
Kingston, as well as SuperMicro and ViewSonic (the other two big foreign-registered tech companies operating here) were all founded by Taiwanese Americans. One of nVidia’s founders is Taiwanese, as is the case with Garmin. I think with these five the list of large foreign-owned companies in the technology sector is exhausted.
If anyone knows of a “truly foreign” company operating in Taiwan on some scale please share.
Very true. I always wonder how come Taiwan and especially HK end up so high in those ease-of-doing-business rankings, way ahead of, say, the Netherlands. As for HK, basically everything there belongs to one of the six tycoons or the two former 洋行s (Jardine Matheson and Swire). Even Carrefour decided to withdraw from there after they got trouble renting retail space and making delivery arrangements, with contracts suddenly being cancelled last-minute (read an interesting story about it but can’t find the link now).
Many are cheated-out by their Taiwanese partners …
I’m not positive but I think both Microsoft and Google are legitimately “foreign” companies, although AFAIK the Taiwan division of both are locals.
I’m not positive but I think both Microsoft and Google are legitimately “foreign” companies, although AFAIK the Taiwan division of both are locals.[/quote]
I think you’re right in that they’re not joint-ventures. There’s also Apple (or more precisely, its Singapore subsidiary). That’s why I added “on some scale” to exclude businesses that only have a trade office and not much else. I know this constraint is a blurry one, but I meant a company that has storefronts, warehouses, a factory, etc.
Google is a minority shareholder in one start-up technology company. 软银中国资本 (SBCVC, Softbank China Venture Capital) also has some holdings here, I think. I guess there must be something if only in the FMCG sector (P&G? Unilever?). I don’t really know the local economy that well. Anyway, it’s not like I can’t sleep until I know the answer to this question either. But in most developed economies there would be too many companies to name in an answer to such question, so I think it also says something.
Truly foreign? Yeah the AIT, owned by the US govt (which is in turn possibly owned by the PRC govt thru US bonds) 
Ok just kiddin.
But that is the trend everywhere in the world. Walmart has destroyed many small shops across the USA.
Starbucks has destroyed many an independent cafe. Some of which were very good.
Yesterday I stopped by a Starbucks I had not been in before. It was at the Larkspur Ferry landing. It was a nice and brightly lit , pleasant Starbucks. Was easy to go in and you knew what would be available so it made a quick and fast pit stop on our way back from the Aquarium at the Golden Gate park back to our home in the East Bay.
But the sad thing was that previous to Starbucks setting up shop there. That particular location held a very nice cafe by the name of MUGS. Their thing was they had a bunch of Mugs around of all sorts. It was a comfortable place that i particularly enjoyed going to back when I didn’t have a car . I would take the Larkspur ferry ( a wonderful , fun filled 35 min by fast ferry or 45 min by slow ferry) from the Ferry Building right on Market Street. It is a great ride for cheap. It was only 12 bucks roundtrip back ten years ago. Now its more like 18 or 20 I think.
Still worth it though, so if you are in downtown SF for a visit. Do the Larkspur Ferry to Larkspur Landing.
Anyway , the Mugs cafe was a nice pitstop before I made my way back. It had a lot of character.
Now its a Starbucks. But that is “progress” ain’t it?
Mom and Pop shops in rural Taiwan largely sucked though. So having them replaced by a Seven was mostly a good thing.
In Wanli , where I lived, a dingy MnP turned into a nice 7 and it was for the better for sure.
at least some of these big chains have rules so you won’t have so much issue with sanitation. Mom and pop stores were hot, dirty, no aircon and probably have questionable sanitation
The following is a table I was looking for to illustrate my point yesterday but couldn’t be bothered to search for it for too long. Today I gave it some time… and voilà. This is a great summary of every major food scandal 統一 (Uni-President) was involved in, how they always managed to blame it on an incidental problem with a supplier, and in the end escape responsibility (click through for an enlarged version, and the Chinese Wikipedia has some more details).
This was made in 2013 so there’s a lot of more recent material it can be updated with. 