TBN sticks with car showroom/shopping mall concept
TBN Group is moving ahead with its unique business-development model that combines automobile showrooms with shopping malls, and will invest about Bt5 billion next year to establish its fourth community mall and its fifth Toyota showroom in Bangkok, as we
It is also planning to enter the hotel and service apartment business, utilising its reserved land plot within its Paseo Mall complex in Bangkok’s Lat Krabang district, said managing director Wijak Lertprasertpakorn.
At a Bangkok hotel, TBN president Chan Lertprasertpakorn attended yesterday’s official launching ceremony for The Paseo Park, its third lifestyle shopping mall, which is on Kanchanaphisek Outer Ring Road. He told reporters that TBN would start constructing its fourth mall on a 50-rai (8-hectare) plot in Rangsit next year with an investment of Bt2.2 billion. Like the previous three projects, the Rangsit mall will have a Toyota service centre sitting beside it that will require an investment of Bt500 million to Bt600 million.
TBN will also expand into residential property for the first time, with two condominium projects costing a combined Bt2 billion approximately, he said. The Rangsit project will complete TBN’s goal to have its Toyota showrooms and community malls covering all four corners of Bangkok.
After opening a standalone Toyota showroom opposite CentralPlaza Bangna 10 years ago, TBN kicked off its unique concept – said to be the first of its kind in Asia – by building its second Toyota showroom with the Paseo Mall at Lat Krabang, in eastern Bangkok, in 2008. It opened its third Toyota showroom and its second mall, Paseo Town, on Ramkamhaeng Road late last year.
Chan said TBN was a relatively new Toyota dealer but it could climb rapidly to become the sixth-largest dealer for Thailand’s largest car company within only 10 years.
Wijak said TBN’s unique mall-plus-car-showroom concept was inspired by a trip on which he accompanied his father Chan to visit a Toyota service centre in the United States several years ago. They saw that the dealership had established a Starbucks outlet and a McDonald’s restaurant within its compound. Because of restrictions against this sort of mix by Toyota Motor (Thailand) Co, TBN has adapted the concept to have its shopping mall sitting beside its automobile service centre instead.
Furthermore, TBN cannot expand its showroom-plus-mall concept upcountry, since its Toyota dealership agreement only allows it to stay in the Bangkok metropolitan area, he said.
Chan said TBN Group posted sales revenue of Bt8.8 billion last year, about Bt8 billion of which was contributed by its Toyota dealership business, while the rest was from its shopping malls’ rental fees. Revenue is forecast to exceed Bt10 billion next year, thanks to the opening of new showrooms and community malls.
The group will open its fourth Toyota showroom on October 4 and will soft-launch Paseo Park in mid-December. Decorated under a Japanese-style theme, Paseo Park will become the first mall in Bangkok to have all of three major fast-food restaurant brands – McDonald’s, Starbucks and KFC – setting up their drive-through outlets in front of the same mall.
