Just as in Hong Kong, Bank of China is also building a new office in Macao. Here, too, the
building will dominate the city skyline.
via the wholesale trade. The time-lag
between order receipt and delivery is
48 hours at most.
Tai Shun Ltd.
One of the wholesale businesses
which Jardine Riche Monde supplies
with Heineken beer is Tai Shun Wine
Provisions Ltd. in Aberdeen on the
south coast of Hong Kong Island. This
wholesale firm, headed by Chow
Cheung, is one of the five biggest in
Hong Kong with sales worth 100 mil
lion HK dollars. Mr Chow has seen
Heineken heer grow strongly in
recent years: 'In my opinion this is
due to the fast growth of the Hong
Kong economy and to the fact that the
consumer appreciates the product
because of its quality. Ten years ago
Heineken was already a premium
product, but people were apparently
not yet ready for it then.' Mr Chow
acknowledges that in the first few
years he was disappointed with the
performance of Heineken in Hong
Kong. Meanwhile, however, he can see
that factors like the big price differ
ential between Heineken and other
brands are starting to pay dividends.
'The basic groundwork has now been
done and I expect that we'll be able to
grow by a further 20% per annum or
so within the next five years.'
Tai Shun has a workforce of 56
and specialises in deliveries to stores
and individual supermarkets.
Representatives
As the wholesalers focus chiefly on
distributing the products and less on
actual selling, Jardine Riche Monde
has 25 representatives on its payroll
who visit both off-premise and on-pre-
mise outlets. In view of the composi
tion of Jardine's range it is logical that
these reps mainly visit the outlets
which offer the best opportunities for
sales of strong liquor.
Karaoke
Outlets which receive less fre
quent calls from the Jardine represen
tative but which offer openings for
Heineken are visited by salesmen
from Guinness Hong Kong. Karaoke is
a typical example of such outlets.
Karaoke is a real rage in Japan
and its enormous popularity soon
spread across to Hong Kong. In karao
ke everything revolves around sing
ing. Anyone who feels the urge can
sing along to the recording of his or
her favourite song. The singer can
read the words of the song from a big
display screen. At the same time a
video clip of the song is displayed on
TV sets installed at various points in
the venues. Kenny Tang who, as
representative of Guinness Hong
Kong, is responsible for Guinness and
Heineken in the on-premise trade, has
this to say about karaoke: 'These
venues will remain popular for a
while yet, but 1 think that they'll have
disappeared a few years from now.'
But for the time being karaoke is a big
crowd-puller, particularly attracting
T H K W O II I. I) O F H K I N K K K N
