Month December 2017

The last company visit for CITO this semester was H&M. On December 1st, James Chang welcomed us to the H&M office in Taipei located on the 23rd floor of the building. Mr Chang, who is PR Manager in Taiwan, began to describe and explain H&M’s business in Taiwan. He told us that the company launched on the Taiwan market in 2015 and now has 12 stores around the country. This year in May, H&M opened the online store on the Taiwanese market. The company has three types of offices in Taiwan with different purposes. The Taipei based office is a Support office while Area and Distribution offices are located around the country. The first market for H&M to launch on in Asia was Hong Kong. This market was aimed to function as “traning” for future launches. Mr Chang explained that Taiwan is a different market compared to Mainland China. In Taiwan, the decisions are taken locally but they have to some level be controlled by Hong Kong. Regarding marketing on the Taiwanese market, Mr Chang and his work team have to follow directions from Sweden. Still, they can put a local touch on their work. For example, they could influence the Asian campaigns and they are able to decide the sizes of the different campaigns that are launched in Taiwan. James Chang was furthermore asked how a regular work day at the Taipei office would look like. Firstly, he mentioned that he takes part of new information from Sweden. This could be information about PR plans or press releases. Other work during the day are usually connected to how H&M should work with influencers, which is a relatively new field in Mr Chang’s work as a PR Manager. At the end of the company visit, James Chang took us to […]

On November 30th CITO representatives traveled to Taipei to visit Svenska Handelsbanken. The CITO officers were greeted by Amy Chen, chief representative at the Taipei Representative Office. Amy described the function of the Representative Office and how it aims to better assist Handelsbanken’s Nordic, British and Netherlands corporate clients operating in the region. She provided the CITO officers with a lot of valuable insights in how the Taiwanese banking system functions and how it differs from the Swedish system. Svenska Handelsbanken is a full-service bank with a nationwide branch network in Sweden, UK, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Netherlands. Founded in 1871, Handelsbanken is one of Sweden’s leading banks with 822 branches in 24 countries, and more than 11 500 employees. The Asian network consists of branches in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore with additional representative offices in Beijing, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur and Mumbai. Part of the services offered by the Taipei Representative Office is providing market and trade information, providing contacts with Taiwanese business community and banking industry, assisting in business negotions, trouble solving logistics and providing interpretation services. Furthermore Amy Chen shared with the CITO officers many interesting stories about Taiwanese history providing a deeper understanding of Taiwanese culture. Business etiquette and cultural differences are crucial when doing business in Asia and the CITO officers are very grateful to Amy for taking the time to share her personal experience operating in the banking industry with us. CITO would like to thank Handelsbanken for hosting us, and specificly Amy Chen for providing such an insightful visit and friendly reception.