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Why are there two Family Marts across the road in Taiwan?
Three bite-sized insights into Asian Retail
Peter Park
January 25, 2025
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Hello ,
In 2024, I posted 127 times on LinkedIn, sharing with my 4,000+ network what it’s like doing business in Asia. I punched away on my laptop from a shared office in Taipei, Airbnb in Korea and a tiny sharehouse room in Melbourne.
In the sea of information, I honed in on Korea and Taiwan, two Asian markets that I know well and am passionate about.
335,000 views and nearly 6,000 engagements proved that there is a sufficient level of interest but also a significant lack of knowledge and execution.
Kicking off with why there are two Family Marts across the road in Taiwan, I will provide three bite-sized insights into Asian retail every week over the next month.
Of course, my interview series is still well and truly alive. Let’s give our entrepreneurs a bit more time to come back into the year with a full swing.
Hope you had a fantastic start to 2025.
Yours Truly,
Peter Park / 박규형
Why are there two Family Marts across the road in Taiwan?
It turns out that the corporation builds another store if the nearby franchisee-owned store performs well financially.
Family Mart is a Japanese convenience store brand that has the second most number of stores in Taiwan (4000) after Seven-Eleven (6500).
In fact, Taiwan has the second highest convenience store density in the world (5.5 stores per 10,000 people) after Korea (9 stores per 10,000 people).
A US$43B grocery retail market is made up of three primary channels: Convenience ($17B, 40%) led by 7/11, Hypermarket ($8.5B, 20%) led by Costco, Supermarket ($13B, 29%) led by PX Mart and Others.
Source: BMI 2023 Q4
It sounds exciting and promising but the margin would be punishing and promotional support would be demanding. Do your numbers right and tight.
Why is South Korea an underrated market?
Korean E-Commerce is the fourth largest in the Asia-Pacific (and 10th in the world), reaching $114B in 2023, or up 10.2% YoY. It will grow at 7.8% YoY between 2024 and 2028, reaching $170B in 2028.
Accelerating E-Commerce penetration driven by market leaders such as Coupang (but at the expense of offline retailers and seller margins).
F&B is the largest sector representing 20% of the E-Commerce volume. See the table below for the fastest-growing segments.
Squid Game, BTS, Blackpink, K-Beauty - Korean market presence has a positive influence when entering other peripheral markets (Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Japan, HK etc)
Source: ECDB; Retail Asia; Euromonitor
As an imported brand, you are already more expensive than domestic alternatives. What really makes you special? Start your desktop research on Coupang. Seriously!
Exporting to a smaller market = "not worth it"?
Avoid the confirmation bias.
Just because the US and UK speak English doesn’t make them necessarily an easy market to enter. Think about the cost of logistics alone.
Asian markets make up a majority of Australia’s Top 10 trading destinations (both import and export). There’s a lot of movements of goods already.
The reverse truth is that not only will you acquire experience to expand to peripheral markets, but "not worth it" opportunities worth $2m-$5m can add up across multiple markets.
You will be pleasantly surprised how few of your competitors are even thinking about exports to Asia, let alone exporting in general.
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