With two world well-known retailers rolling out their new stores on Friday, Hong Kong has witnessed a wave of store expansion.

One is Tsim Sha Tsui SOGO store. As a new landmark along the Avenue of Stars, the two-storey store covers a gross floor area of about 1,150 square meters, housing over 150 local and international brands.

"Compared with the store in Causeway Bay, the new store introduces more trendy and fashionable brands, which will better fit younger shoppers," Eliza Lo, deputy general manager of SOGO's owner - Lifestyle International Holdings Ltd, said.

The other, also at Tsim Sha Tsui, is Uniqlo, Japan's leading casual apparel brand. Though it is the brand's first presence in Hong Kong, the company plans to establish 30 outlets in Hong Kong within three to four years, Pan Ning, Managing Director of Uniqlo Hong Kong, said.

With Hong Kong as the base, Uniqlo will further explore the markets in South China and south-east Asia, Pan added.

Actually, this wave of store expansion started in August. On Aug. 24, the five-star hotel Mandarin Oriental reopened after interior decoration and renovation. On Sept. 5, the British-style department store, Harvey Nicholes, successfully embarked at Central. Three days later, another five-star hotel, Season Hotel, started operation.

According to the Jones Lang LaSalle Retailer Sentiment Survey early this year, 88 percent of the respondents plan to expand this year. Of this group of expanding retailers, 94 percent plan to open new stores. Eighty percent plan to achieve a richer product offering, in particular the fashion retailers. More than half are looking at increasing the size of the existing store while ten plan to expand through acquisition.

"The wave of store expansion shows a strong consumer," said a government spokesman. "The improvement in employment conditions, vibrant inbound tourism, as well as healthy development of the property market lent support to consumer spending," he added.

According to the latest figures released by the Census and Statistics Department of Hong Kong, the unemployment rate from June to August remained at a four year low of 5.7 percent. The launch of the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) led to 5.88 million in the first six months of 2005, well above the average of 5.02 million per year during 2000-2003.

The government's Immigration Department estimated that over 500, 000 mainland visitors will travel through Hong Kong checkpoints during the National Day holidays. If each of them spends 4,000 HK dollars, they will bring 2 billion HK dollars (258 million US dollars) to Hong Kong.

"Riding on Hong Kong's improving economy and the opening of the Hong Kong Disneyland, we are confident about the upward trend in the local retail market. This is why we put an investment of 100 million HK dollars into this new store," Thomas Lau, Managing Director of Lifestyle International Holdings Ltd, said.

Observers said Hong Kong's economy, which rose by a faster-than- expected 6.8 percent in the second quarter, is moving into the second half with expectations of strong consumer and tourist spending with the opening of the Disneyland theme park, the week- long National Day holiday in the mainland, and the World Trade Organization's ministerial meeting in December.

"We can't rule out double-digit retail sales growth in the final quarter," DBS Bank senior investment strategist Daniel Chan said.

Source: Xinhua