Duty Free eyes more provincial outlets

MANILA, Philippines — Duty Free Philippines Corp.(DFPC). is eyeing to expand its footprint next year as it plans to expand in more provincial locations, a top ranking official said.

DFPC chief operating officer Vicente Angala said expanding in tourist destinations in the provinces is among the plans in line with the company’s expansion efforts this year.

“We have Bohol and Palawan, and in Kalibo, we will be expanding our store,” Angala said.

Angala said these will all be in airport destinations. 

“We also have plans of putting up, we just opened our Luxe last October and we’re also planning to put one up in Cebu soon, because it’s a tourist destination,”he added.

DFPC earlier opened its first Luxe store at the Mall of Asia complex, which is targeted to attract the affluent Asian tourists market, particularly the Chinese.

Angala said the company targets to generate P280 million in sales in 2019, which will be driven by the Chinese tourist market.

Apart from expanding its footprint across the country, Angala said the company is also eyeing to improve its product line, particularly for its supermarkekt area, in a bid to address challenges brought by the rise of membership shopping firms such as S&R and Landers.

“Their major products are supermarket items, so what we are doing in our small supermarket area here[Fiesta mall],we’ll try to improve the items being sold,” Angala said.

“Now we will probably change our portfolio to try to include other products such as Japanese and Korean,”he added.

Angala said DFPC is planning to open a Korean and Japanese section soon.

Korea and Japan are among the country’s top source markets of foreign arrivals.

From January to October, arrivals from Korea reached nearly 1.3 million while arrivals from Japan totaled 530,228.

For this year, the DFPC is targeting to generate P226 million in revenues for this year, lower than its initial target of P260 million.This was due to the delays in the opening of some of its stores.

DFPC earlier signed agreements with mobile payment providers WeChat and Alipay, in a bid to better reach the Chinese tourists market.

It has also entered into an agreement with Speed Regalo to cater to the e-commerce market. Angala said the partnership may help augment the company’s sales.