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The region’s second National Geographic store, a joint venture between YTL Corp Bhd and Barcelona-based Worldwide Retail Store SL, has opened here. Located at YTL’s Lot 10 shopping centre, the store is expected to complement the shopping centre’s current positioning as the “Forest in the City”.

It is the second store in the Asian region after Singapore and the fourth store globally. The other two stores are located in London and Spain. ‘We are expecting a very good response,” YTL Corp managing director Tan Sri Francis Yeoh said after the media preview of the store yesterday. He declined to reveal the investment cost of the store, saying only that it was “sizeable”.

Earlier, Worldwide Retail Store chief executive officer Pere Matamales said the Asian market offered huge growth potential. “Asia is the largest market in the world and we expect it to be the number one region for our stores and products,” he said.

It had plans to expand to India this year and open “a few hundred” retail stores in China over the next five years, he added, The growing Asian market was expected to contribute 40% to 45% of National Geographic store’s global revenue in a few years, Matameles said. Matamales said plans were afoot to manufacture some National Geographic merchandise such as clothes here to cater to the Asian markets. However, he said, it would not be an industrial-size investment.

“We will ask local factories to manufacture the goods. “We’re still in discussions about it. “There are a lot of good factories in Malaysia that can make the goods for us,” he said.