The company has 24 spas in Thailand that it operates – 15 in Bangkok, three in Chiang Mai, two in Phuket and one each in Pattaya, Koh Samui, Krabi, Hua Hin and Phuket.

Wiboon said the company was also eyeing launching operations in Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Japan and South Korea.

“Our business expansion overseas will have three business models – the franchise system like in Kunming, a joint venture with a local partner and self-investment,” he said.

“This [the model] depends on the business opportunity and the legal conditions.”

For franchises, the company’s entrance fee is Bt4.5 million for a five-year contract.

It will provide training and advice on a business plan and take 5 per cent of the revenue a month.

Kunming Tailai Spa Management Co Ltd is the franchisee that operates Let’s Relax Spa in Kunming and has plans to open spas in Chongxing and Sichuan provinces.

Its director Wang Ruoming said the company expected to make four million yuan (Bt22 million) in revenue in the first year of operations of Let’s Relax Spa in Kunming.

The company spent Bt10 million on the design of the business under a Thai spa concept.

It plans to open three more branches next year if the first branch is a success.

“The purchasing power to pay for spas in Kunming is showing strong growth as most of them are also interest to use an original Thai spa,” Wang said.

“As a result, we decided to open the first Thai spa in Kunming.”

Siam Wellness Group has set aside an investment budget of Bt500 million this year, with Bt250 million to be spent on 10 new branches in Bangkok and the provinces and renovating existing branches.

The rest will be spent on spa mergers and acquisitions and acquiring restaurants and other service businesses.

The company said the 10 new branches would employ up to 300 staff this year. At the present the company has 900 staff.

Wiboon said the investment budget would come from cash flow and bank loans.

He said the move would result in total revenue increasing more than 35 per cent this year compared to last year.

At the end of 2015, the company reported total revenue of Bt543.5 million and a net profit of Bt106.49 million.

In the first quarter, it reported total revenue of Bt176.02 million and a net profit Bt35.24 million.

Of its total revenue, 84 per cent comes from its spa, 11 per cent from its hotels and restaurants and the rest from the sale of spa products.

Three-quarters of its customers are foreigners and the rest are Thai.

The Thailand-based conglomerate is one of the biggest poultry players in the world.

“We have not prepared any special strategy to anticipate their entrance into the market.

“We welcome newcomers in the competition,” Charoen Pokphand Indonesia president director Tjiu Thomas Effendy said on Wednesday.

In December, Salim Group purchased a controlling stake in Malaysia-based poultry firm CAB Cakaran.

The conglomerate, through its shell company Plant Wealth Holdings, took a 11.05 per cent stake in Cakaran. It plans to form a joint venture in Indonesia this year. “Our Malaysian partner will do the technology transfer, while Indofood will support the operations,” Salim Group chairman Anthoni Salim said recently.

While CP is strong in poultry feed and day-old chicks, its poultry-based food business is low.

This opens the door for Salim, as the big player in the food industry, to enter, especially as Salim owns 35.8 per cent of Fast Food Indonesia, the licensee for KFC in Indonesia.

“Brands want to go digital, and need to, but may lack the know-how, time and resources to be hands-on and do so effectively,” said Julien Chalte, co-founder and chief executive of WearYouWant.

“WearYouWant personalises the experience, creating and servicing every aspect of a merchant’s outlet, from the graphic design of marketing materials to uploading pack-shot images.

“When I look at our monthly pay-outs to our merchants, it is great to see that we are indeed delivering growth to both the smaller independent designer with only one storefront and the big international brands at the same proportional scale.

“The secret for us has been to keep the dual focus of B2B [business-to-business] and B2C [business-to-consumer] and grow the two at the same pace. That has made us and our big and small merchants successful.”

Minor International, a major distributors of brands such GAP, Esprit, Bossini and Red Earth, says it values its partnership with WearYouWant.

“Digital development is rising so fast in Thailand that it is important for us to incorporate the strongest digital sales channels,” said James Richard Amatavivadhana, CEO of Minor International.

“The future of retail is changing, but the core principles of trust, confidence and transparency still reign, especially when it comes to e-commerce. WearYouWant has empowered us to grow digitally and has enabled us to create a flagship online outlet allowing widespread visibility to our brands and products as well as an assurance to consumers that the products they shop are genuine.”

Sam Naghi, owner and managing director of Sam’s Sports shop, is another merchant on WearYouWant’s platform, selling mainly sport shoes.

“Partnering with WearYouWant has made a huge difference for us. We have a whole new revenue stream and a digital storefront where both our products and brand gets noticed by customers we would have been unable to reach ourselves,” he said.

WearYouWant recently received Best E-Commerce Website Awards from the Commerce Ministry’s Department of Business Development in two categories: Best E-Commerce Management and Most Trusted E-Commerce Website.

The awards were presented during the Thailand e-Commerce Day held at “E-Biz Expo” at Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre in Bangkok.

WearYouWant forecasts 120-per-cent growth in turnover in the first half of 2016 compared with the first half of 2015.

“The experience was fun and thrilling,” added You, standing in wet shoes and clothing afterwards.

Having visited Hong Kong Disneyland, You said the Shanghai park was larger and offered more high-tech attractions.

Koike Hideya and his wife Kyoto flew to Shanghai from Nagoya, Japan, for a three-day trip. Compared with Tokyo Disneyland, he said the Shanghai park was bigger, was prettier, and its attractions were better with the use of high technology.

The couple, who are in their 40s, were among more than 10,000 visitors to the Walt Disney Co’s sixth resort and among the first group of overseas Disney visitors to the Chinese mainland.

Bob Iger, the company’s chairman and chief executive officer, said on Wednesday: “When we open, we will continue construction to expand … We’ve had some discussions, mostly internal, on what we would like to do next year.”

The resort is the largest foreign investment to date for the California-based company.

“Nothing is as impactful. Nothing creates a connection to our stories, to our brands, to our characters, [more] than a theme-park experience,” Iger was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.

“The experience people have when they spend time in our theme parks is immersive. They not only hear and see our stories but they actually enter them, they live in them.”

While most of the 300 theme parks in China are unprofitable, Disney is leading an incoming wave of mega-parks developed by both local and foreign operators competing for a tourism industry that is set to double in size by 2020.

According to Bloomberg, about 60 more parks will open by 2020 to serve Chinese consumers, including Dalian Wanda Group’s chain of 15 Wanda Cities.

The Singapore studio, opened on June 9, is IBM’s 30th studio worldwide, aimed at helping clients reinvent their business for the digital age and develop individualised experiences with cognitive computing capabilities and experience design.

IBM has maintained a Bangkok-based team of experts in multiple disciplines with local capabilities that can help Thai clients transform their business digitally, Hirsch said.

On June 9, IBM also opened its Watson Centre at Marina Bay in Singapore, an event presided over by Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam.

IBM Studios in Singapore now serves as a regional hub with more than 100 designers and digital experts from IBM’s iX Interactive Experience unit. Worldwide, IBM has a total of about 1,300 designers at its 30 studios.

To deliver results, clients work with teams of creative designers, researchers, digital strategists, analytics and cognitive-solution experts when analysing business challenges and creating new business models and offerings.

Among the first creations of IBM Studios in Asean are Singapore Airlines’ two mobile applications for its pilots.

The FlyNow app enables pilots to prepare their flights using relevant operational information in a timely manner, while the Roster app aims at enhancing pilots’ awareness of their duties and qualification compliance for operations.

In Thailand, Hirsch said IBM would focus on helping clients in finance and banking, telecoms, retail and healthcare, among other sectors, to reinvent their business for the digital economy.

Bangkok’s renowned Bumrungrad Hospital is one of IBM’s clients in healthcare, using the cognitive computing system for cancer treatment.

Hirsch said there would be further efforts to enhance doctor, patient and staff experiences for more relevant and personalised services. In addition, IBM’s studios aim to be incubator studios for business and tech start-ups such as those for mobile banking and financial-technology services, he said, adding that the firm will also help large clients identify new opportunities and partnerships in the digital economy.

The executive said Thai consumers were digitally mature, as evidenced by various indicators, so there were now opportunities for smart farm-tech start-ups, for example, in partnership with telecom carriers using weather forecasting and other big data.

Robert Morris, vice president for global labs at IBM Research, said the company was also experimenting in a new type of ledgers using blockchain technology with the New York Stock Exchange and major banks.

These widely distributed ledgers, with a majority consensus to verify records of value for almost anything, are regarded as a new way to create cheaper, faster and more reliable records similar to those used by the Bitcoin system. Morris said it was harder to change or violate the system because of the minimum one-third-majority consensus requirement.

According to IBM, blockchain applications can support new payment, settlement, supply-chain and business processes, while enabling Internet of Things data, making it possible to process information from various devices such as RFID-based locations, barcode-scanners, and device-reported data.

This will allow smarter transactions throughout the entire supply chain, especially for more efficient financial transactions or shipping services, among others, he explained.

Piyush Gupta, chief executive officer of DBS Group, said blockchain technology would change the landscape of banking and financial services from a hub-and-spokes system to a widely distributed ledger system.

He cited Alibaba as an example of a fast-growing major platform for payments, lending and wealth management, in addition to e-commerce.